Australia, together with the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Norway, has imposed sanctions on two ministers in the Israeli government for “inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank”.
Australia and the other countries were immediately condemned by the United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who called for them to be lifted.
The move comes as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese prepares to leave on Friday for the G7 in Canada, where he is expected to meet UN President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the conference.
Australia’s signing up for the sanctions is just another complication for the anticipated meeting. The Australian government is under pressure from the US administration to significantly boost its defence spending. Meanwhile, Australia is seeking a deal to get some exemption from the Trump tariffs.
The sanctions are on National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
They include bans on travel to Australia, a freeze on any assets they might have here, and a prohibition on anyone in Australia directly or indirectly making assets available to them.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the two ministers “have been the most extremist and hard line of an extremist settler enterprise which is both unlawful and violent”.
The Israeli ministers are accused of major violations of human rights, including escalating physical violence and abuse by Israeli settlers. A few days ago they marched through Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter with a group that chanted “death to Arabs”.
In a social media post, Rubio said the sanctions “do not advance US-led efforts to achieve a ceasefire, bring all hostages home, and end the war”.
“We reject any notion of equivalence: Hamas is a terrorist organization that committed unspeakable atrocities, continues to hold innocent civilians hostage, and prevents the people of Gaza from living in peace. We remind our partners not to forget who the real enemy is.”
Urging the reversal of the sanctions, Rubio said the US “stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel”.
Asked whether he was concerned the sanctions would damage Australia’s relations with the US, Albanese told reporters he was not: “Australia makes its own decisions based upon the assessments that we make”. He pointed out the action was in concert with the Five Eyes countries of Canada, the UK and new Zealand.
Shadow Foreign Minister Michaelia Cash said sanctioning democratically elected officials of a key ally was “very serious”.
“Labor should be clear who initiated this process, on what basis they have done so and who made the decision”, Cash said. The government should also say what, if any, engagement it had had with the US on the matter, she said.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
After United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested multiple people on alleged immigration violations, protests broke out in Los Angeles.
Authorities have been using “less lethal” weapons against crowds of civilians, but these weapons can still cause serious harm.
Footage of an Australian news reporter being shot by a rubber bullet fired by police – who appeared to deliberately target her – has been beamed around the world. And headlines this morning told of an ABC camera operator hit in the chest with a “less lethal” round.
This has provoked debate about police and military use of force.
As the term suggests, less lethal (also called non lethal or less-than-lethal) weapons are items that are less likely to result in death when compared with alternatives such as firearms.
Less lethal weapons include weapons such as:
pepper spray
tear gas
tasers
batons
water cannons
acoustic weapons
bean-bag rounds
rubber bullets.
They are designed and used to incapacitate people and disperse or control crowds.
They are meant to have temporary and reversible effects that minimise the likelihood of fatalities or permanent injury as well as undesired damage to property, facilities, material and the environment.
In Australia in 2023, for example, 95-year-old aged care resident Clare Nowland was tasered, fell backwards, hit her head and died from her head injury.
In 2012, responding to a mistaken report about an armed robbery, police physically restrained, tasered and pepper sprayed 21-year-old Roberto Curti multiple times. He died but his exact cause of death (and whether the use of less lethal weapons played a causal role) was not clear.
Do these weapons work to quell unrest?
The impetus for police and military use of less lethal force came about, in part, from backlash following the use of lethal force in situations where it was seen as a gross overreaction.
One example was the 1960 Sharpeville massacre in South Africa, when police officers in a black township opened fire on an anti-apartheid protest, killing 69 civilians.
In theory, less lethal force is meant to provide a graduated level of response to events such as riots or protests, where the use of lethal force would be disproportionate and counter-productive.
It is sometimes described as the “next step” to use after de-escalation techniques (like negotiation or verbal commands) have failed.
Less lethal weapons can be used when some degree of force is considered necessary to restore order, neutralise a threat, or avoid full-blown conflict.
How well this works in practice is a different story.
There can be unintended consequences and use of less lethal force can be seen as an act of aggression by a government against its people, heightening existing tensions.
The availability of less lethal weapons may also change perceptions of risk and encourage the use of force in situations where it would otherwise be avoided. This in turn can provoke further escalation, conflict and distrust of authorities.
Samara McPhedran does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne
We now have the (almost!) final results from the 2025 federal election – with only Bradfield still to be completely resolved.
Labor won 94 of the 150 House of Representatives seats (up 17 from 77 of 151 in 2022), the Coalition 43 (down 15) and all Others 13 (down three). It also won 62.7% of seats, its highest seat share since 1943, when it won 49 of 75 seats (65.3% of seats).
Since the beginning of the two-party system in 1910, the 28.7% of seats for the Coalition is the lowest ever seat share for the Liberal and National parties combined, or their predecessors. The Coalition had won 23 of the 75 seats in 1943, its previous worst result (30.7% of seats).
The Poll Bludger said on Wednesday the Liberals could lodge a court challenge to their 26-vote loss in Bradfield to Teal Nicolette Boele within 40 days of the official declaration of the poll (return of the writs).
Owing to the possibility of a challenge in Bradfield, the Australian Electoral Commission does not want to disturb the ballot papers, which would be required for a Labor vs Liberal two-party count in Bradfield. A two-party count may not be completed until after the courts rule on any Liberal challenge.
This article has two-party votes and swings nationally, in metropolitan and non-metropolitan seats and in every state and territory. I will report the current AEC figures, but the Bradfield issue means they will overstate Labor slightly nationally, in metropolitan seats and in New South Wales.
Labor won the national two-party vote against the Coalition by 55.28–44.72, a 3.1% swing to Labor since the 2022 election. This is also Labor’s biggest two-party share since 1943, when they won by an estimated 58.2–41.8. Since the 2019 election, which the Coalition won by 51.5–48.5, Labor has had a swing to it of 6.8%.
The last time either major party won a higher seat share than Labor at this election was in 1996, when the Coalition won 94 of the 148 seats (63.5% of seats) on a national two-party vote of 53.6–46.4. The last time a major party exceeded Labor’s two-party share at this election was in 1975, when the Coalition won by 55.7–44.3.
Swing to Labor was bigger in cities
The AEC has breakdowns for metropolitan and non-metropolitan seats. Metropolitan seats include seats in the six state capitals, Canberra and Darwin. In these seats, Labor won the two-party vote by 60.7–39.3, a 4.1% swing to Labor. In non-metropolitan seats, the Coalition won the two-party by 52.3–47.7, a 1.8% swing to Labor.
In 2019, Labor won the two-party vote in metropolitan seats by 52.1–47.9, so the two-election swing to Labor in those seats was 8.6%. The Coalition won the two-party vote in non-metropolitan seats by 56.8–43.2, so the two-election swing to Labor was 4.5%.
In April 2022, I wrote that Labor could do better in future elections because Australia’s big cities have a large share of the overall population. At this election, voters in metropolitan seats made up 58.3% of all voters. The Coalition will need to do much better in the cities to win future elections.
In all the mainland states, the swing to Labor in the cities exceeded the swing in the regions. In global elections in the last ten years, support for left-wing parties has held up better in cities than elsewhere.
Tasmania was the big exception to this rule. In non-metropolitan Tasmanian seats, Labor won the two-party vote by 59.0–41.0, an 11.8% swing to Labor. In metropolitan seats, Labor won by 70.1–29.9, a 4.7% swing to Labor.
State and territory results
The table below shows the number of seats in a state or territory and nationally, the number won by Labor, the Labor percent of the seats, the number of Labor gains, the Labor two-party vote share, the two-party swing to Labor since 2022, the number of Other seats, the change in Other seats and the number of Coalition seats.
I have ignored redistributions, with Labor gains calculated as the number of seats Labor won in 2025 minus the number it won in 2022. Labor gained Aston at an April 2023 byelection, then held it at this election. As it was not won by Labor in 2022, it counts as a Labor gain.
In Queensland, Labor gained seven seats, five from the Liberal National Party (including Peter Dutton’s Dickson) and two from the Greens. But these gains came from a low base, as Labor won just five of 30 Queensland seats in 2022. Queensland remains the only state where the Coalition won the two-party vote (by 50.6–49.4) and won a majority of the seats.
In NSW, Teal independent-held North Sydney was abolished in the redistribution, but Teal Boele gained Bradfield from the Liberals, and the Nationals lost Calare to former Nationals MP turned independent Andrew Gee. Labor also gained two seats from the Liberals.
In Victoria, Labor-held Higgins was abolished, but Labor gained three seats from the Liberals and one from the Greens (Adam Bandt’s Melbourne). The Coalition gained its one seat when Liberal Tim Wilson narrowly defeated Teal Zoe Daniel in Goldstein.
In Western Australia, Bullwinkel was created as a notional Labor seat, and Labor held it. Labor also gained Moore from the Liberals. In South Australia and Tasmania, Labor gained three seats from the Liberals. Tasmania’s 9.0% swing to Labor was the biggest of any state or territory.
Before the election, it was expected Victoria would be a drag on Labor owing to the unpopularity of the state Labor government. Labor took 71% of Victoria’s seats and had a 1.5% two-party swing to it.
However, relative to the national swing, Victoria was poor for Labor, and it was only ahead of WA and the Northern Territory in swing terms at this election. In 2022, there was a huge 10.6% swing to Labor in WA, so Victoria’s two-election swing to Labor was much lower than anywhere else except the NT.
The ACT’s two-party swing of 5.5% to Labor followed a 5.3% swing in 2022. With two senators, a quota for election is one-third or 33.3%. If the ACT’s two senators keep going to the left, it will be difficult for the Coalition to avoid a hostile Senate even if they win elections for the House.
Other election results and a Morgan poll
In the previous parliament, the 16 Others included four Greens, but the 13 Others at this election include only one Green. This will make the Others more right-wing than in the last parliament.
Turnout at this election was 90.7% of enrolled voters, up 0.9% since 2022. But the informal rate rose 0.4% to 5.6%. The informal rate was 13% or higher in five western Sydney seats.
A large share of non-English speakers, confusion with NSW’s optional preferential voting system at state elections and long candidate lists all contributed to the high informal vote rate at this election.
A national Morgan poll, conducted May 5 to June 1 from a sample of 5,128, gave Labor a 58.5–41.5 lead, from primary votes of 37% Labor, 31% Coalition, 11.5% Greens, 6% One Nation and 14.5% for all Others. Labor led in all states including Queensland, the only state the Coalition won at the election.
Adrian Beaumont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Earlier this year, I attended a housing conference in Sydney. The event’s opening address centred on the way Australia seems to be becoming like 18th-century England – a country where inheritance largely determines one’s opportunities in life.
There has been a lot of media coverage of economic inequities in Australian society. Our tax system has been partly blamed for this problem. The case for long-term, visionary tax reform has never been stronger. And one area of tax reform could be a wealth tax.
First, let’s be clear about one thing. Unlike the superannuation tax reforms currently being debated for those with more than A$3 million in superannuation, the wealth tax we’re talking about would apply to a very different cohort: billionaires.
A recent article in the Financial Times re-examined a proposal to impose such a tax on the world’s highest-net-worth individuals. It also pointed out these efforts would need to be globally coordinated.
Such taxes could collect significant sums of money for governments. It’s previously been estimated a billionaire tax could raise US$250 billion (more than A$380 billion) globally if just 2% of the net worth of the world’s billionaires was taxed each year.
The case for a wealth tax
Inequality is on the rise and the argument for a wealth tax can’t be ignored – not least here at home. According to the Australia Institute, the wealth of Australia’s richest 200 people has soared as a percentage of our national gross domestic product (GDP) – from 8.4% in 2004 to 23.7% in 2024.
If that sounds dramatic, the picture is far worse in the United States. So, what would a wealth tax look like in Australia (noting that in reality a globally coordinated effort would be needed)?
The starting point for this is understanding of why high-net-worth individuals seemingly pay very low taxes.
High net worth, low tax rate
Income taxes only take into account any amounts that are received in the hands of the taxpayer – whether that is a company, a person or a trust.
Most high-net-worth individuals do not receive much income directly but “store” their wealth in companies and other corporate structures.
In Australia, the maximum applicable tax rate for companies is 30%. Note that the highest tax rate in Australia for individuals is 45% plus the 2% medicare levy, effectively 47%.
Assets such as real estate may also be held by companies or trusts, and the increase in value of these assets is not taxed until they are sold (through capital gains tax).
Even then, those gains may not be paid out directly to the high-net-worth individual who owns these entities.
Unrealised gains
So, how do we tax wealth that is sitting in various businesses (company structures) or other entities, but isn’t taxed at present because the “income” or “gains” from these are not taxable in the hands of the wealthy individuals who own them?
This goes into the murky area of taxation of unrealised gains. Here, we need to tread very carefully. But we also need to recognise that we already do this, albeit rather subtly, and most of us are not billionaires.
In your rates notice from your local council, for example, the increase in value of your residence or investment property is used to calculate your rates.
The real difficulty, to carry on with this example, is that your residence or investment property is typically held in your name and so the tax can be directly levied on you.
A luxury residence in Miami Beach, Florida, owned by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon. The US is home to the most billionaires of any country in the world. Felix Mizioznikov/Shutterstock
Making tax unavoidable
As we’ve already explained, the bulk of the assets or net worth of wealthy individuals is not directly attributable to them. Does this mean we should give up altogether?
Not quite. UNSW professor Chris Evans has pointed out that while we may not be able to effectively tax all the net worth of the wealthy, there are some things we can tax and they can’t avoid it.
An obvious example is real estate. You can pack your bags and bank accounts and move to a low-tax country, but you can’t move your mansion overlooking Sydney Harbour.
Real estate, both residential and commercial, provides one clear way in which we could implement a partial wealth tax. This method (which also has fewer valuation issues than value stored in a company in the form of retained profits) also counters the argument that the wealthy will simply move to other jurisdictions that won’t tax them.
There is plenty of academic research looking at various wealth tax initiatives in other countries. We should learn from these, including the experience in Switzerland and Sweden.
In Sweden, for instance, research found the behavioural effects of wealth taxation were less pronounced than those of income taxation, but the system had so many loopholes that evasion was an option for some people.
Change faces headwinds
In a very uncertain world that features ongoing wars and an unpredictable US president, any change that seeks to address issues of inequity is going to be met with resistance by those who hold power.
Some billionaires in the US, however, have expressed their support for being taxed more in a letter signed by heirs to the Disney and Rockefeller fortunes. That offers some hope, and suggests the discussion about wealth taxes should not be relegated to the “too hard” basket.
Some steps towards taxing the uber-rich would be better than the status quo.
Venkat Narayanan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Last week, President Donald Trump ordered an investigation into “who ran the United States while President Biden was in office”, alleging top aides masked the “cognitive decline” of his predecessor. The announcement referenced revelations in a new book by journalists Jake Tapper (CNN) and Alex Thompson (Axios).
Original Sin made headlines last month for revealing that Biden’s declining physical and cognitive health had been hidden from the public by his closest aides and his loyal but overly protective wife, Jill Biden.
Whatever merit there is in Trump’s order must be seen alongside his bottomless cynicism. He seizes on the two authors’ investigative journalism to continue tarnishing his predecessor’s reputation, while doing everything in his power to bully news companies such as CBS over almost meritless defamation cases and to cut the funding of public media organisations PBS and NPR.
Review: Original Sin – Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson (Hutchinson Heinemann)
In November 2020, Biden was seen by many as a hero. He won the American election and saved the country from Donald Trump, who scholars judged among the worst presidents in the nation’s history, not least because just over 384,500 people died from COVID-19 that year.
Today, just as many see Biden as a villain. He said he would be a “bridge” president. He knew he would have ended his second term aged 86 if he had won and served it, so said he would hand over to a successor well in time for the 2024 election. But he didn’t. Not until three and a half weeks after his wincingly bad performance in a debate with Trump last June.
By then it was too late for his Democratic Party to go through its usual primaries process. Biden anointed his vice president Kamala Harris as his successor, but with only 107 days to campaign before the election, it is more accurate to say he gave her what football commentators call a “hospital pass”.
Donald Trump regained the presidency. Four months into his second term, all but his most loyal supporters (and this time he has made sure to surround himself only with loyal supporters) think it is already much worse than his first.
Whatever Biden achieved in his presidency is being forgotten amid the horror at watching America’s democratic institutions assaulted by an authoritarian leader determined to undo Biden’s policies, especially on climate change.
What on earth happened? How much responsibility does Biden bear? Did the news media subject Biden to sufficient scrutiny before the debate last June? Was everyone except the MAGA base suffering from a new variant of what conservative commentators long ago dubbed “Trump derangement syndrome”?
In short order, the answers are: Biden declined faster and worse than had been anticipated; a lot; the media possibly didn’t scrutinise him enough, but it’s more complicated than that – and, yes, “Trump derangement syndrome” was a factor, though not quite in the way conservative commentators thought.
Clooney’s alarm
Original Sin’s most spectacular revelation was that at a Democrat fundraising event last year, Biden did not appear to recognise George Clooney – who as well as being an actor, is a longtime Democrat supporter and a friend of the president.
Clooney was shocked by Biden’s frail appearance. “Holy shit,” he thought, according to the authors, as he watched Biden enter the room, taking tiny steps with “an aide guiding him by his arm”. The book describes the excruciating moment in detail:
“You know George,” the assisting aide told the president, gently reminding him who was in front of him.
“Yeah, yeah,” the president said to one of the most recognizable men in the world, the host of this lucrative fundraiser. “Thank you for being here.”
“Hi, Mr. President,” Clooney said.
“How are ya?” the president replied.
“How was your trip?” Clooney asked.
“It was fine,” the president said.
It was obvious to many standing there that the president did not know who George Clooney was. […]
“George Clooney,” the aide clarified for the president.
“Oh, yeah!” Biden said. “Hi, George!”
A Hollywood VIP who witnessed the moment told the authors “it was not okay”, describing it as “uncomfortable”. Clooney felt he had to sound the alarm publicly, which he did in an impassioned opinion piece for The New York Times a few weeks later, on July 10. He wrote about how he loved and respected Biden, but
the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can. It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.
Just days after publicity about the book began, news broke that Biden has stage four prostate cancer – and that he had not had a prostate test for more than a decade.
The ‘loyalty police’
Tapper and Thompson’s book derives not only from their day jobs, but from reporting they have done since last November’s election, including interviews with 200 people. Some of them, even now, prefer to speak on background rather than be named.
Through them, they tell a bracing story with three main themes.
First, there is the unblinking loyalty of close aides. Chief strategist Mike Donilon had been with Biden since 1981. Bruce Reed was a speechwriter and longtime political consultant. Steve Ricchetti had been Biden’s chief of staff when he was vice president, and was also a friend who would watch the morning political shows with him. All four of Richetti’s children worked in the Biden administration, the authors write.
Jill Biden’s longtime aides, Annie Tomasini and Anthony Bernal, were fiercely protective of the Bidens as much as the office of the president. “Are you a Biden person?” they would ask, leading other aides to label them the “loyalty police”.
Collectively, the close aides were known as The Politburo. Kamala Harris’ aides called them a “cabal of the unhelpful”. Time and again, they responded to queries about Biden’s health with firm assurances he was doing fine – even though the president needed to be supplied with cue cards when he was meeting his cabinet secretaries.
Biden, like previous presidents, had an annual medical check-up and was given a clean bill of health. But doctors outside the White House noted that his cognitive abilities were not tested. Asked about this, aides – and Biden himself – would say he passed a cognitive test every day of his presidency, which was a superficially plausible but practically meaningless statement.
Some aides genuinely believed in Biden, while others harboured doubts. The latter suppressed those to focus on the task of defeating Trump in 2024. One told Tapper and Thompson: “He just had to win, and then he could disappear for four years – he’d only have to show proof of life every once in a while.” Which sounds pretty much like the plot of the 1989 movie, Weekend at Bernie’s, except the situation was anything but comic.
Biden’s aides admonished journalists, including Alex Thompson, for even raising the issue of the president’s health. Worse, they shielded Biden from what his own pollsters were saying about his dire prospects for re-election.
The oldest presidential candidates
For Biden, work usually began at 9am, included two hours in the afternoon for “POTUS time”, and finished at 4.30pm when he had dinner. Availability for evening events was limited. By 2024, cabinet secretaries in the Biden administration told Tapper and Thompson that Biden could not be relied upon to be available at 2am for the kind of emergency the presidency can require.
After the Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, born the same year as Biden, froze in public a second time, in 2023, his fellow Republican Nikki Haley said, “The Senate is the most privileged nursing home in the country […] You have to know when to leave.”
When the Democrats did unexpectedly well at the 2022 midterm elections, Biden’s aides took that as a sign he should run again, rather than note the level of protest in the midterm vote, which came soon after the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade decision on abortion.
The opinion polls, though, were telling. An early November 2022 Ipsos poll had the president’s approval rating at a low 39%, Tapper and Thompson report. Two thirds of those surveyed said they thought the country was on the wrong track. When Ipsos ran a poll after the midterm election, 68% said Biden might not be up for the challenge of running in 2024. Worse, almost half of Democrats agreed.
Biden’s aides may have been right to marvel at what their boss could still do, and to resent the media harping on about Biden’s age while turning a blind eye to his cheeseburger-chomping, Coke-slurping political nemesis, only four years younger. The bitter fact for them is that by 2020 Biden looked and sounded frail while Trump looked and sounded commanding.
Trump may have lied repeatedly during the debate last June, but in a real sense that was not news; Trump lies as easily as he breathes. What was news was watching a mumbling, open-mouthed US president freeze on live television.
Grisly anecdotes and Hunter Biden
Original Sin is replete with grisly anecdotes about Biden’s decrepitude. “The guy can’t form a fucking sentence”, thought one aide attending to him onboard Air Force One. This leads to the second main theme: the tragic circumstances that appear to have accelerated the decline.
It is well known that personal tragedy has scarred – and in crucial ways shaped – Biden’s life and career. He lost his first wife, Neilia, and their one-year-old daughter, Naomi, in a car accident in 1972. Their young sons, Beau and Hunter, were in the car. They survived but Hunter suffered a fractured skull, an injury with lifelong effects, according to Tapper and Thompson.
Beau served as an army officer in the Iraq war. On his return, he was elected attorney-general of Delaware in 2006 and 2010. He planned to run for governor in 2016. But a year earlier, the brain cancer for which he was first treated in 2013 recurred; he died in May 2015. In a worrying precursor to later actions, the Bidens kept Beau’s illness a secret. “Beau’s death aged him significantly,” a longtime Biden confidant told Tapper and Thompson. “His shoulders looked smaller. His face looked more gaunt. In his eyes, you could just see it.”
A year later, Hunter Biden became addicted to crack cocaine. Ashley, Biden’s daughter by his second wife Jill, also struggled with addiction. Both spiralled downwards after Beau’s death, which weighed heavily on their father. As the authors write:
After Beau’s death in 2015, Biden desperately and understandably clung to Hunter. He would privately refer to him as ‘my only living son.’ But Biden aides felt that Hunter manipulated his father’s blind love for his own aims. The president struggled to say no to Hunter. Aides felt that he had tragically become Hunter’s chief enabler.
In 2021 Hunter published a memoir, Beautiful Things, and travelled round the country in an effort to provide hope to others struggling with addiction. The memoir’s candour provided valuable information to David Weiss, a special counsel appointed by Attorney-General Merrick Garland in 2023.
Weiss had been previously appointed by the first Trump administration to investigate the contents of a laptop Hunter Biden left at a repair shop. Biden had not interfered with Garland’s decision, as he did not want to be seen as behaving the way his predecessor had.
Weiss charged Hunter Biden over his possession of a handgun while being addicted to cocaine. A plea deal broke down and Hunter faced trial in 2024. The Biden family attended each day of the trial. Biden felt guilty, believing Hunter would never have been on trial if he wasn’t the president’s son.
There is little doubt the Republicans weaponised Hunter Biden’s actions, but he gave them plenty of ammunition. He had had an extramarital affair with his brother’s widow and had introduced her to cocaine, to which she became addicted. There is more, but you get the (tawdry) picture.
Then, after the election in November, Biden did what he had repeatedly said he wouldn’t, exercising his power as president to pardon his son. It may have been the understandable action of a besieged father, but Biden did not frame it that way, blaming Garland, wrongly, for pursuing the case.
Equally to the point, the authors report that Trump’s lawyers took note, believing the Hunter Biden pardon “gave them a great deal of leeway on whether they could pardon and free from prison the hundreds of convicted January 6 insurrectionists” from the 2021 Capitol riot. Which of course Trump did as soon as he took office in January 2025.
The old adage has it that two wrongs don’t make a right. But for a politician who had won the presidency promising to be everything Trump was not, it was a fatal, final blow to Biden’s credibility.
The media ‘missed a lot’
The third theme of the book asks how much of all this the news media reported during Biden’s presidency. Some, but not all of it – including some by Thompson, who recently won a White House Correspondents’ Association award for his disclosures.
Both he and his co-author acknowledge they and other journalists did not dig hard enough to reveal the extent to which the Biden administration was hampered by the president’s declining health. Said Thompson:
Being truth-tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves. We – myself included – missed a lot of this story, and some people trust us less because of it […] We should have done better.“
It is worth keeping this in perspective. The news media’s failings in the lead up to the Iraq war in 2003 were more significant. Then, too many journalists swallowed the administration’s lines justifying its decision to invade a country, while the work of those who did report sceptically was buried well inside the newspaper. There, it “played as quietly as a lullaby”, as The New York Times’ first public editor, Daniel Okrent, wrote in 2003.
The war’s reporting led to a lot of soul searching in American newsrooms. If there was a coverup in the media about the Biden administration, it wasn’t very effective, wrote media critic Jon Allsop in the New Yorker. “Not least because the majority of the public thought Biden was too old long before the debate.”
The other element infecting both the mainstream media and social media is divisiveness, rancour and hostility. It is hard, for journalists and the public, to see political information other than through a hyper-partisan lens. I felt this acutely when reading the section in Original Sin about Biden getting drawn into the FBI’s investigation of Trump for withholding classified documents – when the FBI found Biden had done essentially the same thing. (Though it should be stressed Biden, unlike Trump, cooperated at all times.)
‘Well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory’
It was through this investigation that special counsel Robert Hur’s recording of a long interview with Biden came to light. Journalists were backgrounded that Hur was a right-wing operative; he was anything but that, write Tapper and Thompson. He treated Biden fairly and respectfully. In the interview, excerpts of which run to seven pages of the book, Biden rambles and needs regular reminding of facts – including the year his son Beau died.
In Hur’s report, released in 2024, he found Biden had inappropriately retained classified documents but he did not recommend pressing charges. To a jury, Hur concluded, Biden would present “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”. He was making the kind of decision prosecutors routinely make about the likelihood of a conviction.
Hur was attacked by the White House and much of the media as a partisan warrior who had brought up the death of the president’s son in the interview, when it was Biden who mentioned it himself. If Hur really had been a partisan warrior, the authors write, he would have recommended continuing with the prosecution.
Several months later, after the disastrous Biden-Trump debate, friends and colleagues texted Hur saying he must have felt vindicated. “Hur told them that all he felt was sad. How could anyone look at Joe Biden at that debate and not feel bad?”
It is true that aides, and sometimes the news media, have covered up previous presidents’ health issues, such as Franklin Roosevelt’s paralysis from polio, John Kennedy’s debilitating back pain that required heavy doses of painkillers, and Ronald Reagan’s Alzheimer’s disease.
Tapper and Thompson argue the coverup of Biden’s health problems is the most consequential in presidential history.
Underplays Biden’s achievements
The authors successfully prosecute their case about Biden’s responsibility for his own demise. Perhaps worried they may not be believed by Democrat supporters, they continue amassing evidence well beyond that point, which means the minutiae of aides continuing to deny the reality of Biden’s decline becomes repetitive.
Their relentless focus on Biden’s decline also means they underplay both his achievements as a president and the breadth of his character. At one point, they admiringly refer to Richard Ben Cramer’s book about the 1988 presidential campaign, What it Takes, which includes Biden’s failed attempt to win the Democratic nomination for the presidency.
Cramer’s book is a massive 1,047 pages. He interviewed more than a thousand people and took so long on the book it came out during the next presidential campaign, in which Bill Clinton was elected.
One reviewer, Richard Brownstein, wrote of it: “Presidential elections are the white whale of American journalism – and in Cramer they have found a manic Melville.” But it is written in an intimate, novelistic style, taking the reader deep into the lives and thoughts and feelings of the candidates, George H.W Bush, Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis, Richard Gephardt, Gary Hart and Biden.
Cramer told Robert Boynton in an interview for his 2005 book, The New New Journalism, he was amazed political journalists spend so little time talking to childhood friends, family and early colleagues.
If you want to understand how someone got to the point where he [sic] is a credible candidate for president of a nation of 250 million people, you’d better godamn-well know how he is wonderful. But most journalists don’t care about that.
As such, Cramer provides a deeper, richer portrait of Biden as an idiosyncratic and flawed, but also impressive politician, who was a force of nature in his youth. By comparison, Original Sin reads like an autopsy: which in a way, it is. If you want to remember why Biden became an effective politician in the first place, seek out a copy of What it Takes.
In the end, though, whatever achievements Biden had as president are being overtaken by his disastrous decision to try to hang on for a second term. By the evidence presented in Original Sin, “Honest Joe” was, like many politicians, prey to ego and overvaulting ambition, and prone to secrecy when it suited him.
He and his aides thought – and astonishingly still do think – he was the person best able to repel the return of a person they feared (with good reason) would do enormous damage to the country. Biden said this after the November election, earning Harris’s ire, for which he apologised, and Donilon affirmed it in an interview with the authors early this year.
The savage irony is, by their actions, Biden and his team eased Trump’s path to victory last November. Now, it is not just Americans but the rest of the world who are left to deal with the second Trump administration.
Matthew Ricketson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
As more and more people spend time chatting with artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots such as ChatGPT, the topic of mental health has naturally emerged. Some people have positive experiences that make AI seem like a low-cost therapist.
But AIs aren’t therapists. They’re smart and engaging, but they don’t think like humans. ChatGPT and other generative AI models are like your phone’s auto-complete text feature on steroids. They have learned to converse by reading text scraped from the internet.
When someone asks a question (called a prompt) such as “how can I stay calm during a stressful work meeting?” the AI forms a response by randomly choosing words that are as close as possible to the data it saw during training. This happens so fast, with responses that are so relevant, it can feel like talking to a person.
But these models aren’t people. And they definitely are not trained mental health professionals who work under professional guidelines, adhere to a code of ethics, or hold professional registration.
Where does it learn to talk about this stuff?
When you prompt an AI system such as ChatGPT, it draws information from three main sources to respond:
background knowledge it memorised during training
external information sources
information you previously provided.
1. Background knowledge
To develop an AI language model, the developers teach the model by having it read vast quantities of data in a process called “training”.
Where does this information come from? Broadly speaking, anything that can be publicly scraped from the internet. This can include everything from academic papers, eBooks, reports, free news articles, through to blogs, YouTube transcripts, or comments from discussion forums such as Reddit.
Are these sources reliable places to find mental health advice? Sometimes.
Are they always in your best interest and filtered through a scientific evidence based approach? Not always. The information is also captured at a single point in time when the AI is built, so may be out-of-date.
A lot of detail also needs to be discarded to squish it into the AI’s “memory”. This is part of why AI models are prone to hallucination and getting details wrong.
2. External information sources
The AI developers might connect the chatbot itself with external tools, or knowledge sources, such as Google for searches or a curated database.
When you ask Microsoft’s Bing Copilot a question and you see numbered references in the answer, this indicates the AI has relied on an external search to get updated information in addition to what is stored in its memory.
Meanwhile, some dedicated mental health chatbots are able to access therapy guides and materials to help direct conversations along helpful lines.
3. Information previously provided
AI platforms also have access to information you have previously supplied in conversations, or when signing up to the platform.
When you register for the companion AI platform Replika, for example, it learns your name, pronouns, age, preferred companion appearance and gender, IP address and location, the kind of device you are using, and more (as well as your credit card details).
On many chatbot platforms, anything you’ve ever said to an AI companion might be stored away for future reference. All of these details can be dredged up and referenced when an AI responds.
And we know these AI systems are like friends who affirm what you say (a problem known as sycophancy) and steer conversation back to interests you have already discussed. This is unlike a professional therapist who can draw from training and experience to help challenge or redirect your thinking where needed.
What about specific apps for mental health?
Most people would be familiar with the big models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, or Microsofts’ Copilot. These are general purpose models. They are not limited to specific topics or trained to answer any specific questions.
But developers can make specialised AIs that are trained to discuss specific topics, like mental health, such as Woebot and Wysa.
However, these studies have all examined short-term use. We do not yet know what impacts excessive or long-term chatbot use has on mental health. Many studies also exclude participants who are suicidal or who have a severe psychotic disorder. And many studies are funded by the developers of the same chatbots, so the research may be biased.
This evidence all suggests AI chatbots may be an option to fill gaps where there is a shortage in mental health professionals, assist with referrals, or at least provide interim support between appointments or to support people on waitlists.
Bottom line
At this stage, it’s hard to say whether AI chatbots are reliable and safe enough to use as a stand-alone therapy option.
More research is needed to identify if certain types of users are more at risk of the harms that AI chatbots might bring.
It’s also unclear if we need to be worried about emotional dependence, unhealthy attachment, worsening loneliness, or intensive use.
AI chatbots may be a useful place to start when you’re having a bad day and just need a chat. But when the bad days continue to happen, it’s time to talk to a professional as well.
Aaron J. Snoswell previously received research project funding from OpenAI in 2024-2025 to develop new evaluation frameworks for measuring moral competence in AI agents.
Laura Neil receives funding through the Australian government Research Training Program Scholarship.
Centaine Snoswell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speech by Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB, at the People’s Bank of China in Beijing
Beijing, 11 June 2025
It is a pleasure to be back here in Beijing.
Some years ago, I spoke about how a changing world was creating a new global map of economic relations.[1]
Maps have always reflected the society in which they are produced. But in rare instances, they can also capture historical moments when two societies meet at the crossroads.
This was evident in the late 1500s during the Ming Dynasty, when Matteo Ricci, a European Jesuit, travelled to China. There Ricci went on to work with Chinese scholars to create a hybrid map that integrated European geographical knowledge with Chinese cartographic tradition.[2]
The result of this cooperation – called the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, or “Map of Ten Thousand Countries” – was historically unprecedented. And the encounter came to symbolise China’s openness to the world.
In the modern era, we saw a similar moment when China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. The country’s accession to the WTO signified its integration into the international economy and its openness to global trade.
China’s entry into the WTO went on to reshape the global map of economic relations at a time of rapid trade growth, bringing significant benefits to countries across the world – particularly here in China.
Since that time, the global economy has changed dramatically. In recent years, trade tensions have emerged and a geopolitically charged landscape is making international cooperation increasingly difficult.
Yet the emergence of tensions in the international economic system is a recurring pattern across modern economic history.
Over the last century, frictions have surfaced under a range of international configurations – from the inter-war gold exchange standard, to the post-war Bretton Woods system, to the subsequent era of floating exchange rates and free capital flows.
While each system was unique, two common lessons cut across this history.
First, one-sided adjustments to resolve global frictions have often fallen short, regardless of whether deficit or surplus countries carry the burden. In fact, they can bring with them either unpredictable or costly consequences.
Such adjustments can be especially problematic when trade policies are used as a substitute for macroeconomic policies in addressing the root causes.
And second, in the event that tensions do emerge, durable strategic and economic alliances have proven critical in preventing tail risks from materialising.
In contrast to eras when ties of cooperation were weak, alliances have ultimately helped to prevent a broader surge in protectionism or a systemic fragmentation of trade.
These two lessons have implications for today. Frictions are increasingly emerging between regions whose geopolitical interests may not be fully aligned. At the same time, however, these regions are more deeply economically integrated than ever before.
The upshot is that while the incentive to cooperate is reduced, the costs of not doing so are now amplified.
So the stakes are high.
If we are to avoid inferior outcomes, we all must work towards sustaining global cooperation in a fragmenting world.
Tensions across history
If we look at the history of the international economic system over the past century, we can broadly divide it into three periods.
In the first period, the inter-war years, major economies were tied together by the gold exchange standard – a regime of fixed exchange rates, with currencies linked to gold either directly or indirectly.
But unlike the pre-war era, when the United Kingdom played a dominant global role[3], there was no global hegemon. Nor were there impactful international organisations to enforce rules or coordinate policies.
The system’s flaws quickly became apparent.[4] Exchange rate misalignments caused persistent tensions between surplus and deficit countries. Yet the burden of adjustment fell overwhelmingly on the deficit side.
Facing outflows of gold, deficit countries were forced into harsh deflation. Meanwhile, surplus countries faced little pressure to reflate. By 1932, two surplus countries accounted for over 60% of the world share of gold reserves.[5]
One-sided adjustments failed to resolve the underlying problems. And without strong alliances to contain tail risks, tensions escalated. Countries turned to trade measures in an attempt to reduce imbalances in the system – but protectionism offered no sustainable solution.
In fact, if current account positions narrowed at all, it was only because of the fall-off in world trade and output. The volume of global trade fell by around one-quarter between 1929 and 1933[6], with one study attributing nearly half of this fall to higher trade barriers.[7] World output declined by almost 30% in this period.[8]
During the Second World War, leaders took the lessons to heart. They laid the groundwork for what became the Bretton Woods system in the early post-war era: a framework of fixed exchange rates and capital controls.
This marked the beginning of the second period.
The new regime was anchored by the US dollar’s convertibility into gold, with the International Monetary Fund acting as a referee. Trade flourished during this era. Between 1950 and 1973[9], world trade expanded at an average rate of over 8% per year.[10]
But again, frictions emerged.
In particular, the United States had shifted from initially running balance of payments surpluses to persistent deficits. At the heart of this shift was the role of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency and source of liquidity for global trade.
While US deficits provided the world with vital dollar liquidity, those very same deficits strained the dollar’s gold convertibility at USD 35 per ounce, threatening confidence in the system.
By the late 1960s, foreign holdings of US dollars – amounting to almost USD 50 billion – were roughly five times the size of US gold reserves.[11]
Ultimately, these tensions proved unsustainable as the United States was unwilling to sacrifice domestic policy goals – which generated fiscal deficits – for its external commitments.
The Bretton Woods system ended abruptly in 1971, when President Nixon unilaterally suspended the US dollar’s convertibility into gold and imposed a 10% surcharge on imports.
The goal behind the surcharge was to force US trading partners to revalue their currencies against the dollar, which was perceived as being overvalued.[12] As in earlier periods, this was a one-sided adjustment – though now aimed at shifting the burden onto surplus countries.
Crucially, however, the downfall of Bretton Woods unfolded within the context of the Cold War. Countries operating under the system were not just trading partners – they were allies.
And so, everyone had a strong geopolitical incentive to pick up the pieces and forge new cooperative agreements that could facilitate trade relationships, even in moments of pronounced volatility.
We saw this several months after the “Nixon Shock”, when Western countries negotiated the Smithsonian Agreement.
This agreement was a temporary fix to maintain an international system of fixed exchange rates. It devalued the US dollar by over 12% against the currencies of its major trading partners and removed President Nixon’s surcharge.[13]
And we saw a strong geopolitical incentive at work again with the Plaza Accord in the 1980s – an era of floating exchange rates and free capital flows – when deficit and surplus countries in the Group of Five[14] sat down to try and resolve tensions.
Of course, neither agreement ultimately succeeded in addressing the root causes of tensions. But critically, the risk of a broader turn toward protectionism – which was rising at several points[15] – never materialised.
The contrast is telling.
Both the inter-war and post-war eras revealed that one-sided adjustments cannot sustainably resolve economic frictions – whether on the deficit or surplus side.
Yet the post-war system proved far more resilient, because the countries within it had deeper strategic reasons to cooperate.
Frictions threatening global trade today
In recent decades, we have been moving into a third period.
Since the end of the Cold War, we have seen the rapid expansion of truly global trade.
Trade in goods and services has risen roughly fivefold to over USD 30 trillion.[16] Trade as a share of global GDP has increased from around 38% to nearly 60%.[17] And countries have become much more integrated through global supply chains. At the end of the Cold War, these chains accounted for around two-fifths of global trade.[18] Today, they account for over two-thirds.[19]
Yet this globalisation has unfolded in a world where – increasingly – not all nations are bound by the same security guarantees or strategic alliances. In 1985 just 90 countries were party to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Today, its successor – the WTO – counts 166 members, representing 98% of global trade.[20]
There is no doubt that this new era has amplified the benefits of trade.
Some originally lower-income countries have experienced remarkable gains – none more so than China.
Since joining the WTO, China’s GDP per capita has increased roughly twelvefold.[21] The welfare impact has been equally profound: almost 800 million people in China have been lifted out of poverty, accounting for nearly three-quarters of global poverty reduction in recent decades.[22]
Advanced economies, too, have benefited, albeit unevenly. While some industries and jobs have faced pressure from heightened import competition[23], consumers have enjoyed lower prices and greater choice. And for firms able to climb the value chain, the rewards have been substantial – especially in Europe.
Today, EU exports to the rest of the world generate more than €2.5 trillion in value added – nearly one-fifth of the EU’s total – and support over 31 million jobs.[24]
But the weakening alignment between trade relationships and security alliances has left the global system more exposed – a vulnerability now playing out in real time.
According to the International Monetary Fund, trade restrictions across goods, services and investments have tripled since 2019 alone.[25] And in recent months, we have seen tariff levels imposed that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.
This fragmentation is being driven by two forces.
The first is geopolitical realignment. As I have outlined in recent years, geopolitical tensions are playing an increasingly decisive role in reshaping the global economy.[26] Countries are reconfiguring trade relationships and supply chains to reflect national security priorities, rather than economic efficiency alone.
The second force is the growing perception of unfair trade – often linked to widening current account positions.
Current account surpluses and deficits are not inherently problematic, particularly when they reflect structural factors such as comparative advantage or demographic trends.
But these imbalances become more contentious when they do not resolve over time and create the perception that they are being sustained by policy choices – whether through the blocking of macroeconomic adjustment mechanisms or a lack of respect for global rules.
Indeed, while in recent decades the persistence of current account positions has remained fairly constant, the dispersion of those positions – that is, how widely surpluses and deficits are spread across countries – has shifted significantly.
In the mid-1990s current account deficits and surpluses were similarly dispersed within their respective groups: both were relatively evenly distributed among several countries.[27]
Today, that balance has changed. Deficits have become far more concentrated, with just a few countries accounting for the bulk of global deficits. In contrast, surpluses have become somewhat more dispersed, spread across a wider range of countries.
These developments have recently led to coercive trade policies and risk fragmenting global supply chains.
Making global trade sustainable
Given national security considerations and the experience during the pandemic, a certain degree of de-risking is here to stay. Few countries are willing to remain dependent on others for strategic industries.
But it does not follow that we must forfeit the broader benefits of trade – so long as we are willing to absorb the lessons of history. Let me draw two conclusions for the current situation.
First, coercive trade policies are not a sustainable solution to today’s trade tensions.
To the extent that protectionism addresses imbalances, it is not by resolving their root causes, but by eroding the foundations of global prosperity.
And with countries now deeply integrated through global supply chains – yet no longer as geopolitically aligned as in the past – this risk is greater than ever. Coercive trade policies are far more likely to provoke retaliation and lead to outcomes that are mutually damaging.
The shared risks we face are underscored by ECB analysis. Our staff find that if global trade were to fragment into competing blocs, world trade would contract significantly, with every major economy worse off.[28]
This leads me to the second conclusion: if we are serious about preserving our prosperity, we must pursue cooperative solutions – even in the face of geopolitical differences. And that means both surplus and deficit countries must take responsibility and play their part.
All countries should examine how their structural and fiscal policies can be adjusted to reduce their own role in fuelling trade tensions.
Indeed, both supply-side and demand-side dynamics have contributed to dispersion of current accounts positions we see today.
On the supply side, we have witnessed a sharp rise in the use of industrial policies aimed at boosting domestic capacity. Since 2014, subsidy-related interventions that distort global trade have more than tripled globally. [29]
Notably, this trend is now being driven as much by emerging markets as by advanced economies. In 2021, domestic subsidies accounted for two-thirds of all trade-related policies in the average G20 emerging market, consistently outpacing the share seen in advanced G20 economies.[30]
On the demand side, global demand generation has become more concentrated, especially in the United States. A decade ago, the United States accounted for less than 30% of demand generated by G20 countries. Today, that share has risen to nearly 35%.
This increasing imbalance in demand reflects not only excess saving in some parts of the world, but also excess dissaving in others, especially by the public sector.
Of course, none of us can determine the actions of others. But we can control our own contribution.
Doing so would not only serve the collective interest – by helping to ease pressure on the global system – but also the domestic interest, by setting our own economies on a more sustainable path.
We can also lead by example by continuing to respect global rules – or even improving on them. This helps build trust and creates the foundation for reciprocal actions.
That means upholding the multilateral framework which has so greatly benefited our economies. And it means working with like-minded partners to forge bilateral and regional agreements rooted in mutual benefit and full WTO compatibility.[31]
Central banks, in line with their respective mandates, can also play a role.
We can stand firm as pillars of international cooperation in an era when such cooperation is hard to come by. And we can continue to deliver stability-oriented policies in a world marked by rising volatility and instability.
Conclusion
Let me conclude.
In a fragmenting world, regions need to work together to sustain global trade – which has delivered prosperity in recent decades.
Of course, given the geopolitical landscape, that will be a harder challenge today than it has been in the past. But as Confucius once observed, “Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbours”.
Today, to make history, we must learn from history. We must absorb the lessons of the past – and act on them – to prevent a mutually damaging escalation of tensions.
In doing so, we all can draw a new map for global cooperation.
Company Announcement June 10, 2025, Bornstein Seafoods of Bellingham, Washington is recalling 44,550 Lbs. of Cooked & Peeled Ready-To-Eat Coldwater Shrimp Meat (see table below for multiple lot codes) because it has the potential to be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, an organism which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Although healthy individuals may suffer only short-term symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea, listeria infection can cause miscarriages and stillbirths among pregnant women. Product was distributed directly to distributors and retailers in California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia of Canada. Products may have been further distributed and sold at retailers nationwide. Product can be identified under Bornstein Seafoods branded packaging in 1 lb. or 5 lb. plastic bag. The market name is Shrimp. The affected product has the lot code printed at the lower left corner of master case label and at the bottom on the back side of 1 lb. or 5 lb. bag:
Item No.
UPC Code
Master Case Label Description
Lot No.
ZMU41-1003
614133200246
Fzn Shrimp Meat 250/350 Ct 15 X 1 Lb Bag Bsi Msc
A19008
ZMU41-1007
614133200239
Fzn Shrimp Meat 250/350 Ct 4 X 5 Lb Bag Bsi Msc
A19009
ZMU41-1007
614133200239
Fzn Shrimp Meat 250/350 Ct 4 X 5 Lb Bag Bsi Msc
P11710
ZMU41-1015
614133200246
Fzn Shrimp Meat 350/500 Ct 15 X 1 Lb Bag Bsi Msc
A19009
ZMU41-1015
614133200246
Fzn Shrimp Meat 350/500 Ct 15 X 1 Lb Bag Bsi Msc
A19019
ZMU41-1015
614133200246
Fzn Shrimp Meat 350/500 Ct 15 X 1 Lb Bag Bsi Msc
A19026
ZMU41-1015
614133200246
Fzn Shrimp Meat 350/500 Ct 15 X 1 Lb Bag Bsi Msc
A19030
ZMU41-1015
614133200246
Fzn Shrimp Meat 350/500 Ct 15 X 1 Lb Bag Bsi Msc
A19032
ZMU41-1015
614133200246
Fzn Shrimp Meat 350/500 Ct 15 X 1 Lb Bag Bsi Msc
A19037
ZMU41-1015
614133200246
Fzn Shrimp Meat 350/500 Ct 15 X 1 Lb Bag Bsi Msc
A19039
ZMU41-1019
614133200239
Fzn Shrimp Meat 350/500 Ct 4 X 5 Lb Bag Bsi Msc
A18989
ZMU41-1019
614133200239
Fzn Shrimp Meat 350/500 Ct 4 X 5 Lb Bag Bsi Msc
A19006
ZMU41-1019
614133200239
Fzn Shrimp Meat 350/500 Ct 4 X 5 Lb Bag Bsi Msc
A19007
ZMU41-1019
614133200239
Fzn Shrimp Meat 350/500 Ct 4 X 5 Lb Bag Bsi Msc
P11709
ZMU41-1019
614133200239
Fzn Shrimp Meat 350/500 Ct 4 X 5 Lb Bag Bsi Msc
P11710
No illnesses have been reported to date. The recall was the result of the firm’s routine sampling program and Listeria monocytogenes was detected in an in-process shrimp sample in a food production environment. The company has ceased the distribution of the product as the company continues our root cause investigation as to what caused the problem. This recall is being made with the knowledge of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Consumers who have purchased the affected product are urged to return it to the place of purchase for a full refund. Consumers with questions may contact the company by email at Andrew@bornstein.com.
Government moves to help farmers more easily access independent solar power and battery technology advice and finance are a positive step, Federated Farmers energy spokesperson Mark Hooper says.
Energy Minister Simon Watts announced at the Federated Farmers Advocacy Hub at Fieldays this afternoon a package of measures designed to boost use of solar power on New Zealand’s farms.
“Early modelling tells us that if 30% of Kiwi farms installed larger solar power systems – of the size we see on some farms already – they could generate as much as 10% of New Zealand’s current electricity demand,” Minister Watts said.
Hooper agrees that sort of uptake would be a massive win for security of energy supply and self-sufficiency on farm – including when rural areas are hit by grid outages.
“The roofs of wool and dairy sheds can be a great platform for solar panels. Small- and medium-scale installations can provide a great boost for farm businesses.
“Electricity costs are not a major component of most farms’ expenses, unless they have irrigation, but as solar panel and battery technology improves and costs fall, farmer interest in this option will only increase.
“Installing solar systems for self-sufficiency across our farms is certainly preferable to productive farmland being swallowed up, or compromised, by enormous solar farms.”
The Government package includes real life energy data for different types of farms, feasibility studies and technology demonstrations, and a partnership with the Centre for Sustainable Finance to accelerate access to finance, making it quicker, simpler and easier.
Hooper says the value of independent advice, and the chance to see and question how solar and battery technologies are already working on farms, shouldn’t be over-estimated.
“For some farmers thinking about the solar option, the only contact they currently have is with the company trying to sell them something.”
An important part of the package is access to advice on progressing consents and applications with local and regional bodies and electricity distribution businesses.
“Being able to supply excess power generated from on-farm solar back into the local grid, and to earn revenue, is a factor that could well get more farm owners across the line.
“Any help from the Government to ease those negotiations with electricity distribution businesses would be very welcome,” Hooper says.
Source: United States Senator for Connecticut – Chris Murphy
[embedded content]
WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Monday spoke on the U.S. Senate floor to call on his Senate colleagues to stand up to President Trump’s brazen corruption of U.S. foreign policy. Murphy will force a vote as early as this week on two joint resolutions of disapproval to block multi-billion-dollar weapons sales to Qatar and the UAE after Trump demanded billions of dollars in luxury gifts and business deals from the two countries, including a $400 million dollar luxury plane that he intends to keep for personal use.
Murphy exposed the historic nature of Trump’s corruption and the danger it poses to national security: “The blatant exchange of U.S. national security secrets, our most sensitive drone technology and our most sensitive chip technology, in exchange for cash into Donald Trump’s pocket, is perhaps the most brazenly corrupt act in the history of the American presidency. And we cannot normalize it just because he is doing it out in the open, in public.
On Trump demanding Qatar gift him a luxury jet for his own personal use, Murphy said: “Now, this kind of gift, a $400 million luxury jet, it has no precedent in American history. No President has ever asked for, never mind been given, a $400 million gift from a foreign nation. Why? Well, because presidents know that that’s crossing a line. That is a massive abuse of their power. The leverage that presidents have over other countries, that they could use to ask for millions of dollars in gifts, it’s supposed to be used to benefit the nation’s security, not to enrich themselves. But also, it’s just illegal. There is a very specific clause in the Constitution that forbids this kind of gift from a foreign government to a president. And this body is supposed to be in charge of helping to enforce the Constitution. Our founders wrote that clause into the Constitution because they worried about this exact situation, where a president is using his authority like a monarch or a king to make himself the richest person in the world.
Murphy stressed that Republicans and Democrats must unite to protect the U.S. Constitution and preserve a foreign policy rooted in furthering American interests: “Donald Trump is using the power of his office not to help or protect us, but to enrich himself and his family. He is doing it publicly, brazenly, out in the open. He is, in effect, daring us – specifically daring the legislative branch, the co-equal branch – to stop him…Republicans can’t ignore this just because the president is their party’s leader. We have that independent obligation to protect the Constitution, which clearly says that these gifts are illegal, whether they’re going to a Democratic president or a Republican president. We have a responsibility to our taxpayers to stop a president from immorally enriching himself, using the power we give him to help himself instead of helping us.
He concluded: “The net result is an American public that is poorer, and weaker, and less secure. And a president who is richer. It’s corrupt. It’s corrupt. We’ve never, ever, in the history of this country, allowed for a president to do this. Never in the 250 years that our republic has been on the Earth has a president ever asked another nation to enrich himself in this way, in exchange for preferential treatment from the U.S. taxpayers. If you are a Republican or a Democratic senator, you have to see this as unprecedented, as terrible for our nation, as corruption. American foreign policy should not be for sale. If we let these arms sales go through, we are greasing the wheels of that corruption. If we vote for these resolutions of disapproval, at least we have a shot to stop it.”
Murphy filed these joint resolutions of disapproval last month.
A full transcript of his remarks can be found below:
MURPHY: “The U.S. Constitution and the American people give the American president vast power: the power to decide how billions of dollars are spent; the power to oversee the entire federal criminal justice system; the power to sell arms around the world; to deploy millions of American soldiers; to negotiate peace treaties. We give him these powers – the Constitution gives the president these powers – so that he uses them on our behalf: to deploy that vast power of the American presidency; to increase our quality of life; to protect the American people. We place immense trust in the president not to abuse these incredible authorities that are given to him. But Donald Trump is abusing that authority in ways that honestly shock the conscience.
“Donald Trump is using the power of his office not to help or protect us, but to enrich himself and his family. He is doing it publicly, brazenly, out in the open. He is, in effect, daring us – specifically daring the legislative branch, the co-equal branch – to stop him.
“Nearly three weeks ago, news broke that the White House had dialed up one of our key allies in the Middle East, the government of Qatar, and it asked that the Qataris give the president a luxury jet that is reportedly worth upwards of $400 million.
“Now, the nicest jet that I have ever been on is Air Force One, and it’s really nice. But the jet that Trump wants to make Air Force One, that he’s asking for from the Qataris, makes Air Force One, the current version, look like a tenement house. The Qatari jet that he is asking for, its interior is designed by a famed French designer, complete with a flowing grand staircase, sculpted ceilings, plush carpeting, leather couches, gold furnishings. The plane has been called the world’s most luxurious private jet. It includes nine bathrooms, five kitchens, swanky lounges, and a master bedroom suite. The arrangement that Trump proposed to the Qataris would briefly pass the jet through U.S. government hands, but only, as reported, for just a year or two before it would end up belonging personally to Donald Trump. The U.S. Government would essentially be a straw purchaser. The real owner of the jet, for all practical purposes, would be Donald Trump.
“Now, this kind of gift, a $400 million luxury jet, it has no precedent in American history. No President has ever asked for, never mind been given, a $400 million gift from a foreign nation. Why? Well, because presidents know that that’s crossing a line. That is a massive abuse of their power. The leverage that presidents have over other countries, that they could use to ask for millions of dollars in gifts, it’s supposed to be used to benefit the nation’s security, not to enrich themselves. But also, it’s just illegal. There is a very specific clause in the Constitution that forbids this kind of gift from a foreign government to a president. And this body is supposed to be in charge of helping to enforce the Constitution. Our founders wrote that clause into the Constitution because they worried about this exact situation, where a president is using his authority like a monarch or a king to make himself the richest person in the world.
“Now, the Qatar government feels like it had little choice but to say yes when asked for this $400 million gift – again, briefly to the U.S. Government – but really, for all practical purposes, to the president. They felt like they had no choice precisely because an American president has so much power. They have so much leverage, especially over a vulnerable country in the Middle East. In this case, Qatar really needs to keep the United States on its side. Middle East politics, they shift really quickly, and during Trump’s first term, when the Qataris were not close to Trump, they paid a price. They found themselves badly and dangerously isolated in the region. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, if you remember, effectively ganged up to blockade Qatar, and Trump gave that move implicit consent. Qatar, frankly, is willing to pay a very high price to avoid that fate again.
“But Qatar also has things that it wants from the United States. No Middle East country has ever been allowed to buy MQ-9 Reaper drones. These are the most lethal armed drone that America makes. We have previously judged that the region is just too volatile to allow any nation to possess the Reaper, and arguably there’s an arms control regime that doesn’t allow us to transfer that technology, but Qatar wanted to break that precedent. Of course they did. They wanted to be the first nation to have the Reaper technology, and Trump seemed willing to go along. So, a $400 million gift to the president, again, that the president was asking for, it’s a relatively small price to pay for that kind of military edge over your rivals in the region.
“But there was one more reason that Qatar had no choice but to give Trump, or at least they felt they had no choice but to give Trump, this wildly illegal gift: because Trump had made it clear to the whole region, to the whole of the Gulf region in the Middle East, that he was for sale and that preferential American treatment was for sale. And if Qatar didn’t pay, another country would. Qatar wasn’t going to be protected, frankly, by a collective refusal of Trump’s extortion in the region. And they had only to look next door to the United Arab Emirates to see how high the price was getting to win Trump’s affection.
“At the exact moment that Trump was leaning on Qatar to give him the luxury plane, he was also leaning on UAE to give him not a $400 million gift, but a $2 billion gift. And he didn’t have to lean hard. Just before the Qataris committed to give Trump the plane, an investment firm, backed by the Emirati government and chaired by Emirati government’s national security advisor, shocked the world and announced that it would use Trump’s brand-new stablecoin, this is a form of cryptocurrency, in a $2 billion investment deal that this investment fund, essentially an arm of the UAE government, was doing. And because of that $2 billion deal, overnight Trump’s stablecoin became one of the five largest stablecoins in the world, massively inflating the president’s wealth due to this one single investment. Now this wasn’t an ordinary investment decision. Out of all the stablecoin companies in the world, the Emiratis chose what at the time was a brand-new, relatively small crypto company, run by two people who had very little background in the industry. Why? To put money directly into the pocket of Donald Trump. On the website of World Liberty Financial – that’s the company that is issuing the Trump coin – they don’t hide the fact that this isn’t the Trump kids that own the business. On the website, it states 60% of this company, World Liberty Financial, is owned by an entity affiliated with Donald J. Trump.
“But it gets even more corrupt because World Liberty Financial’s other cofounder is a guy named Zach Witkoff, who, not coincidentally, is the son of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s top Middle East advisor. The Trumps could have picked anybody in the world to run this stablecoin business with but they chose the son of the Middle East envoy, just so that when they were going around asking for money in the region, it was crystal clear that if you were doing business with World Liberty Financial, you were doing business with the people in the Trump administration who make all the decisions about the Middle East. So, in one fell swoop, the Emiratis can put money into the family that controls the White House and the family that deploys and decides Middle East policy.
“Now, just like the Qataris, the Emiratis want something in return, too. Their ask was for the U.S. to remove restrictions on selling the most advanced American-made computer chips to the UAE. The restrictions have been in place under Republican and Democratic administrations for a really good reason. The UAE has a very close, too close, relationship with China. And the U.S. is always rightly worried that if we gave advanced technology to UAE, it would pretty quickly, potentially, fall into the hands of the Chinese. Now, this would be really bad – especially regarding these microchips, these computer chips – because these chips power the most advanced and proprietary American A.I. systems. Losing these chips to China could cost us the lead to China on the global A.I. race. The UAE also wanted the United States to look the other way while they helped fund a death-spiral civil war in Sudan. The UAE is the main supplier of weapons to the worst of the two parties that are involved in the brutal, catastrophic, deadly, civil war in Sudan. And they want the United States to keep giving them weapons, most recently asking for a resupply of Chinook helicopters, even as they use their military prowess to destroy Sudan.
“Now, the end of this chapter of the story will not shock you. In coordination with the $400 million luxury plane and the $2 billion investment in Trump crypto, Qatar got sign-off on buying the Reaper drones. And Steve Witkoff, father of the co-owner of World Liberty Financial, marched over to UAE, right before the president was showing up himself, and announced that the United States would, in fact, magically lift those restrictions on the microchips. And just as unsurprisingly, Trump announced that he’ll sell the Chinooks to Abu Dhabi, with no requirement that they stop fueling the war in Sudan.
“The blatant exchange of U.S. national security secrets, our most sensitive drone technology and our most sensitive chip technology, in exchange for cash into Donald Trump’s pocket, is perhaps the most brazenly corrupt act in the history of the American presidency. And we cannot normalize it just because he is doing it out in the open, in public.
“The Senate, which is given the responsibility by the Constitution to be a coequal branch with the president, we have independent responsibility to uphold and protect the Constitution, to set American foreign policy. We cannot pretend this is not happening. We cannot look the other way while the entire moral foundation of our foreign policy is being shattered. Republicans can’t ignore this just because the president is their party’s leader. We have that independent obligation to protect the Constitution, which clearly says that these gifts are illegal, whether they’re going to a Democratic president or a Republican president. We have a responsibility to our taxpayers to stop a president from immorally enriching himself, using the power we give him to help himself instead of helping us.
“What makes this moment so dangerous is that both UAE and Qatar, but especially Qatar, are key partners of the United States. They aren’t our adversaries. They are our allies. They’re imperfect allies, but they are our allies. In fact, I’ve been down on this floor in the past arguing on behalf of Qatar and the U.S.-Qatar relationship, when other senators have tried to denigrate the Qataris’ contributions to regional peace. The Qataris have been a critical partner of ours on so many important issues. It’s worth saying that. There’s no way that we would have been able to evacuate 124,000 people from Afghanistan on the eve of the Taliban takeover without Qatar’s help. The Qataris today host thousands of U.S. troops at Al Udeid Air Force Base. That’s the largest base in the region. The Qataris are critical mediators who helped us send back-channel messages to secure the release of American hostages or negotiate peace deals. There’s no question that Qatar is a country that helps stabilize the region and often is indispensable in protecting U.S. interests overseas. So, I want to cultivate and strengthen that important relationship. I honor the work that the United States and UAE does all around the region to try to track down and hold accountable terrorists. These are real partnerships. But our relationship with Qatar and the UAE, it can’t be a corrupt relationship. We can’t sell drones to Qatar, our friend, if our friend is willing to take part in Trump’s corruption. We cannot sell weapons to the UAE, our ally, if our ally is willing to take part in Trump’s corruption.
“We’ll have a chance this week to make this clear: that the United States Senate will not facilitate, will not grease the wheels of Trump’s corruption of our foreign policy. We can do that by voting to block these two arms sales to Qatar and the UAE. Not permanently, but until both countries commit to deny Trump’s requests for personal enrichment as part of the bilateral relationship. That’s why Senators Van Hollen, Kaine, Schatz, and Sanders have joined me in two resolutions of disapproval for those Reaper drone sales and the Chinook sale, and we’ll have a vote on these two resolutions as early as this week.
“President Trump has declared that U.S. foreign policy is for sale. And the opening bids, from two of the richest nations in the world, is a $2 billion investment in Trump’s crypto company, from the UAE, and a $400 million luxury plane, essentially for the president’s permanent personal use. At the exact same moment that Trump is trying to push a bill through this Congress that is going to ruin a lot of people’s lives, cutting off their health care or leaving kids without food at night, he’s making himself even richer by trading American national security policy for gifts. And, to make it worse, trading away U.S. national security secrets in exchange. The net result is an American public that is poorer, and weaker, and less secure. And a president who is richer. It’s corrupt. It’s corrupt. We’ve never, ever, in the history of this country, allowed for a president to do this. Never in the 250 years that our republic has been on the Earth has a president ever asked another nation to enrich himself in this way, in exchange for preferential treatment from the U.S. taxpayers. If you are a Republican or a Democratic senator, you have to see this as unprecedented, as terrible for our nation, as corruption. American foreign policy should not be for sale. If we let these arms sales go through, we are greasing the wheels of that corruption. If we vote for these resolutions of disapproval, at least we have a shot to stop it.
“I yield the floor.”
What you need to know: In an address delivered to nearly 40 million Californians and Americans nationwide tonight, Governor Gavin Newsom condemned President Trump’s unlawful militarization of Los Angeles and warned that the President’s actions mark a dangerous inflection point for the nation.
LOS ANGELES — In an address delivered to nearly 40 million Californians and Americans nationwide tonight, Governor Gavin Newsom condemned President Trump’s unlawful militarization of Los Angeles and warned that the President’s actions mark a dangerous inflection point for the nation.
“What we’re witnessing is not law enforcement — it’s authoritarianism,”Governor Newsom said to Californians. “What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty. Your silence. To be complicit in this moment. Do not give in to him.”
Governor Newsom recounted recent federal raids in Latino neighborhoods, the unlawful commandeering of 4,000 California National Guard members, and the deployment of over 700 active-duty Marines to the streets of an American city — all done without consultation with state or local officials. “Trump is pulling a military dragnet across Los Angeles,”Newsom said. “It’s weakness masquerading as strength.”
Calling this a moment of national reckoning, the Governor urged Americans to take peaceful action. “The most important office in a democracy is not President or Governor — it’s citizen.”
Watch and read the entire speech here:
Governor Newsom’s Address to California: Democracy at a Crossroads
I want to say a few words about the events of the last few days.
This past weekend, federal agents conducted large-scale workplace raids in and around Los Angeles.
Those raids continue as I speak.
California is no stranger to immigration enforcement.
But instead of focusing on undocumented immigrants with serious criminal records and people with final deportation orders – a strategy both parties have long supported – this administration is pushing mass deportations.
Indiscriminately targeting hardworking immigrant families, regardless of their roots or risk.
What’s happening right now is very different than anything we’ve seen before.
On Saturday morning, when federal agents jumped out of an unmarked van near a Home Depot parking lot, they began grabbing people.
A deliberate targeting of a heavily Latino suburb.
A similar scene also played out when a clothing company was raided downtown.
In other actions: a US citizen, 9 months pregnant – arrested. A four-year-old girl – taken.
Families separated. Friends disappearing.
In response, everyday Angelinos came out to exercise their Constitutional right to free speech and assembly
To protest their government’s actions.
In turn, the State of California and the City and County of Los Angeles sent our police officers to help keep the peace, and with some exceptions, they were successful.
Like many states, California is no stranger to this sort of civil unrest. We manage it regularly … and with our own law enforcement.
But this, again, was different.
What then ensued was the use of tear gas. Flash-bang grenades. Rubber bullets.
Federal agents, detaining people and undermining their due process rights.
Donald Trump, without consulting with California’s law enforcement leaders, commandeered 2,000 of our state’s National Guard members to deploy on our streets.
Illegally, and for no reason.
This brazen abuse of power by a sitting President inflamed a combustible situation … putting our people, our officers, and the National Guard at risk.
That’s when the downward spiral began. He doubled down on his dangerous National Guard deployment by fanning the flames even harder.
And the President did it on purpose.
As the news spread throughout LA, anxiety for family and friends ramped up. Protests started again.
By night, several dozen lawbreakers became violent and destructive. They vandalized property. They tried to assault police officers.
Many of you have seen video clips of cars burning on cable news.
If you incite violence or destroy our communities, you are going to be held accountable.
That kind of criminal behavior will not be tolerated. Full stop.
Already, more than 370 people have been arrested. And we’re reviewing tapes to build additional cases, and people will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Again, thanks to our law enforcement officers and the majority of Angelenos who protested peacefully, this situation was winding down and was concentrated in just a few square blocks downtown.
But that’s not what Donald Trump wanted.
He again chose escalation; he chose more force.
He chose theatrics over public safety – he federalized another 2,000 Guard members.
He deployed more than 700 active U.S. Marines.
These are men and women trained in foreign combat, not domestic law enforcement.
We honor their service. We honor their bravery. But we do not want our streets militarized by our own Armed Forces. Not in L.A. Not in California. Not anywhere.
We’re seeing unmarked cars in school parking lots. Kids, afraid to attend their own graduation.
Trump is pulling a military dragnet across LA, well beyond his stated intent to just go after violent and serious criminals.
His agents are arresting dishwashers, gardeners, day laborers and seamstresses – That’s just weakness. Weakness, masquerading as strength.
Donald Trump’s government isn’t protecting our communities – they are traumatizing our communities. And that seems to be the point.
California will keep fighting on behalf of our people – all of our people – including in the courts.
Yesterday, we filed a legal challenge to President Trump’s reckless deployment of American troops to a major American city.
Today, we sought an emergency court order to stop the use of the American military to engage in law enforcement activities across Los Angeles.
If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin color, then none of us are safe.
Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.
Trump and his loyalists thrive on division because it allows them to take more power and exert even more control.
By the way, Trump – he’s not opposed to lawlessness and violence, as long as it serves HIM.
What more evidence do we need than January 6th?
I ask everyone to take the time to reflect on this perilous moment.
A president who wants to be bound by no law or constitution.
Perpetrating a unified assault on American traditions.
This is a President who, in just over 140 days, has fired government watchdogs that could hold him accountable for corruption and fraud.
He’s declared a war on culture, on history, on science – on knowledge itself. Databases, quite literally vanishing.
He’s delegitimizing news organizations and assaulting the First Amendment.
At the threat of defunding them, he’s dictating what universities can teach.
Targeting law firms and the judicial branch that are the foundation of an orderly, civil society.
Calling for a sitting Governor to be arrested for no other reason than – to use his words – “for getting elected.”
And we all know, this Saturday, he’s ordering our American heroes – the United States military – forcing them to put on a vulgar display to celebrate his birthday, just as other failed dictators have done in the past.
Look, this isn’t just about protests in LA.
When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard, he made that order apply to every state in this nation.
This is about all of us. This is about you.
California may be first – but it clearly won’t end here. Other states are next.
Democracy is next.
Democracy is under assault right before our eyes – the moment we’ve feared has arrived.
He’s taking a wrecking ball to our founding fathers’ historic project.
Three independent, coequal branches of government.
There are no longer any checks and balances. Congress is nowhere to be found. Speaker Johnson has completely abdicated that responsibility.
The rule of law has increasingly given way to the rule of Don.
The founding fathers did not live and die to see this moment.
It’s time for all of us to stand up.
Justice Brandeis said it best: in a democracy, the most important office is not president, it’s certainly not governor. The most important office is office of citizen.
At this moment, we must all stand up and be held to a higher level of accountability.
If you exercise your First Amendment rights, please do so peacefully.
I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear.
But I want you to know that YOU are the antidote to that fear and anxiety.
What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty. Your silence. To be complicit in this moment.
Do NOT give in to him.
Press releases
Recent news
Jun 10, 2025
News LOS ANGELES – Governor Newsom and Attorney General Bonta are standing up all states by filing a lawsuit and request to block President Trump and the Department of Defense’s illegal militarization of Los Angeles and the takeover of a California National Guard (Cal…
Jun 10, 2025
News “Turning the military against American citizens” What you need to know: Standing up for American citizens and the Nation’s foundational ban on martial law in peacetime, California Governor Newsom and Attorney General Bonta are requesting the court step in to…
Jun 9, 2025
News What you need to know: California is surging mutual aid resources to support law enforcement as they clean up the actions caused by President Trump. LOS ANGELES – Moving quickly to support local response to federal actions that have caused unrest in Los Angeles,…
Source: United States Senator for Massachusetts – Elizabeth Warren
June 10, 2025
Warren gains key concessions from Secretary McMahon in a private meeting.
Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) met with Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. Senator Warren also delivered over 1,000 letters to McMahon that the senator had received from people in all 50 states who are worried about the Secretary’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education (ED).
“My job as a U.S. Senator is to conduct oversight and hold officials’ feet to the fire when they are actively harming the American people. I was able to secure important commitments from Education Secretary McMahon, which will make a real difference for people with student loans,” said Senator Warren. “But at a time when President Trump and Republicans in Congress are trying to make it more expensive for students from working-class families to get ahead, I will not stop fighting to ensure that every student has access to affordable, quality education in America.”
During the meeting, Secretary McMahon revealed four key pieces of information to Senator Warren:
Secretary McMahon conceded that she has no statutory authority to move the responsibilities of the Department of Education to other agencies without Congress passing legislation first. This comes as the Trump administration tries to abolish the Department by shifting its responsibilities to the Small Business Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services, among other agencies that are ill-equipped to take on the Department of Education’s responsibilities. “McMahon didn’t just say she didn’t have the intention to do it—she said that she is legally barred from doing it,” said Senator Warren. “I asked her about the legal authority she would have to transfer any part of the functions of the Department of Education somewhere else, for example, to the SBA, and she said, ‘I can’t do that. That is the job of Congress.’ There was no ambiguity in her answer.”
Secretary McMahon confirmed that she does not intend to restart Social Security offsets for people with defaulted student loans. McMahon told Senator Warren that she personally decided to pause the seizure of Social Security benefits after the Trump administration had announced that it would start forced Social Security collections.“The Education Secretary has assured me that the pause that is currently in place will stay in place and if there is to be any change in that, she would get in touch with me directly before we go there,” said Senator Warren.
Secretary McMahon stated that she intends to soon restore the income-driven repayment (IDR) payment count tracker to studentaid.gov, allowing borrowers to track their progress towards receiving debt relief, after taking down the tracker earlier in the Trump administration.
Secretary McMahon admitted that she recommended cuts to the Pell Grant program because of the program’s budgetary shortfall, but that it was ultimately up to Congress to fund the Pell program. “McMahon purported to be a supporter of Pell and said that she thought these changes were necessary for fiscal responsibility,” said Senator Warren. “The idea that the Republicans want to cut Pell further, I can already say categorically, is a really bad idea and it’s going to mean that we’re going to lose some number of young people who want to get an education and who ultimately benefit this country when they get an education.”
Secretary McMahon also committed to responding in writing to Senator Warren’s June 4, 2025 letter containing 66 questions regarding her policies as Education Secretary. Last month, Senator Warren invited Secretary McMahon to a public forum Warren held on May 14, 2025 on higher education affordability. Secretary McMahon refused the invitation in a May 12 letter and instead agreed to a meeting with Senator Warren.
Senator Warren launched the Save Our Schools campaign in a coordinated effort to fight back against President Trump’s attempts to abolish the Department of Education:
On June 9, 2025, Senator Warren led her colleagues in pushing the Acting Inspector General of ED to open an investigation into new information obtained by her office revealing that DOGE may have gained access to two FSA internal systems, in addition to sensitive borrower data.
On May 20, 2025, Senator Warren and 27 other senators pushed for full funding for the Office of Federal Student Aid.
On May 20, 2025, Senator Warren and 27 other senators pushed for full funding to the Office of Federal Student Aid.
On May 14, 2025, Senator Warren led a Senate forum entitled “Stealing the American Dream: How Trump and Republicans Are Raising Education Costs for Families,” highlighting the consequences of Secretary Linda McMahon’s reckless dismantling of the Department of Education (ED) and President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” for working- and middle-class students and borrowers.
On May 13, 2025, Senator Warren agreed to meet with Education Secretary Linda McMahon and promised to bring questions and stories from Americans across the country to highlight how the Trump administration’s attacks on education are hurting American families.
On May 6, 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren highlighted the consequences of President Trump and Secretary Linda McMahon’s reckless dismantling of the Department of Education for American families in a Senate forum.
On April 24, 2025, Senator Warren launched a new investigation into the harms of President Trump’s attacks on the Department of Education, seeking information on the impact of the Trump administration’s actions from the members of twelve leading organizations representing schools, parents, teachers, students, borrowers, and researchers.
On April 10, 2025, following a request led by Senator Warren, the Department of Education’s Acting Inspector General agreed to open an investigation into the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the Department of Education.
On April 2, 2025, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Mazie Hirono, along with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, sent a letter to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon regarding the Department of Government Efficiency’s proposed plan to replace the Department of Education’s federal student aid call centers with generative artificial intelligence chatbots.
On April 2, 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren launched the Save Our Schools campaign to fight back against the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education (ED) and highlight the consequences for every student and public school in America.
On March 27, 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) led a letter to Acting Department of Education Inspector General (IG) René Rocque requesting that the IG conduct an investigation of the Trump Administration’s attempts to dismantle the Department of Education.
On March 20, 2025, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders led a letter to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon regarding the Trump Administration’s decision to slash the capacity of Federal Student Aid to handle student aid complaints.
On February 24, 2025, in a response to Senator Warren, Secretary McMahon gave her first public admission that she “wholeheartedly” agreed with Trump’s plans to abolish the Department of Education.
On February 11, 2025, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Andy Kim sent Linda McMahon, Secretary-Designate for the U.S. Department of Education, a 12-page letter with 65 questions on McMahon’s policy views in advance of her nomination hearing.
BROOKFIELD, NEWS, June 10, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Brookfield Wealth Solutions (NYSE, TSX: BNT) today announced the approval of all items of business at the company’s annual general and special meeting of shareholders. The meeting was held earlier today in a virtual meeting format.
All five nominees proposed for election to the board of directors by holders of class A exchangeable limited voting shares (“class A shares”) and all five nominees proposed for election to the board of directors by the holder of class B limited voting shares (“class B shares”) were elected. Detailed results of the vote for the election of directors are set out below.
Management received the following proxies from holders of class A shares in regard to the election of the five directors nominated for election by this shareholder class:
DirectorNominee
VotesFor
%
VotesWithheld
%
Dr. Soonyoung Chang
23,747,124
99.17
199,324
0.83
William Cox
22,970,300
95.92
976,149
4.08
Michele Coleman Mayes
23,696,733
98.96
249,716
1.04
Lars Rodert
23,273,435
97.19
673,014
2.81
Anne Schaumburg
23,678,628
98.88
267,820
1.12
Management received a proxy from the holder of class B shares to vote all 24,000 class B shares for each of the five directors nominated for election by this shareholder class, being Barry Blattman, Gregory Morrison, Lori Pearson, Sachin Shah and Jay Wintrob.
All other matters put forth at the meeting were approved by shareholder vote and a summary of all votes cast by shareholders represented at the company’s annual general and special meeting of shareholders will be available electronically on EDGAR on the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s website at www.sec.gov or on Brookfield Wealth Solutions’ SEDAR profile at www.sedarplus.ca.
About Brookfield Wealth Solutions Brookfield Wealth Solutions Ltd. (NYSE, TSX: BNT) is focused on securing the financial futures of individuals and institutions through a range of retirement services, wealth protection products and tailored capital solutions. Each class A exchangeable limited voting share of Brookfield Wealth Solutions is exchangeable on a one-for-one basis with a class A limited voting share of Brookfield Corporation (NYSE, TSX: BN).
For more information, please visit our website at bnt.brookfield.com or contact:
BUENOS AIRES, June 10, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Grupo Financiero Galicia S.A. (Nasdaq: GGAL; Bolsas y Mercados Argentinos S.A./A3 Mercados S.A.: GGAL, the “Company”), one of Argentina’s largest financial services groups, announced today the pricing of the previously announced underwritten secondary offering (the “Offering”) by HSBC Bank plc (the “Selling Shareholder”) of 11,721,449 American Depositary Shares (“ADSs”) representing 117,214,490 Class B ordinary shares of the Company, par value Ps.1.00 per share (“Class B ordinary shares”) at a public offering price of $54.25 per ADS. The ADSs are not authorized for public offering in Argentina by the Argentine National Securities Exchange Commision (Comisión Nacional de Valores – “CNV”) and are not being offered or sold publicly under the Argentine Capital Markets Law No. 26,831, as amended and complemented. The documents related to the Offering have not been filed with, reviewed or authorized by the CNV, and therefore the CNV has not made any determination as to the truthfulness or completeness of those documents.
All of the ADSs were offered by the Selling Shareholder. The Selling Shareholder will receive all of the proceeds from the Offering. The Company is not selling any ADSs in the Offering and will not receive any proceeds from the Offering.
Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC are acting as the representatives of the underwriters of the Offering. The Offering is expected to close on June 12, 2025 subject to customary closing conditions.
The Offering is being made pursuant to an effective shelf registration statement on Form F-3 (including a prospectus) filed by the Company with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). A final prospectus supplement and accompanying prospectus describing the terms of the Offering will be filed with the SEC, copies of which may be obtained, when available, from Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Attention: Prospectus Department, 180 Varick Street, 2nd Floor, New York, New York 10014, and from Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Attention: Prospectus Department, 200 West Street, New York, New York 10282, by telephone at (866) 471-2526, or by email at prospectus-ny@ny.email.gs.com. These documents may also be obtained free of charge by visiting EDGAR on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov.
This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), and Section 21E of the Exchange Act. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, those regarding the expected closing of the Offering. Forward-looking statements generally can be identified by the use of such words as “may”, “will”, “expect”, “intend”, “estimate”, “anticipate”, “believe”, “continue” or other similar terminology, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Such statements are subject to numerous important factors, risks and uncertainties that may cause actual events or results to differ materially from current expectations and beliefs, including, but not limited to, risks and uncertainties related to: the occurrence of any event, change or other circumstance that could impact the expected timing, completion or other terms of the Offering; the impact of general economic, industry or political conditions in the United States or internationally, as well as the other risk factors set forth under the caption Item 3.D. “Risk Factors” in our most recent annual report on Form 20-F, and from time to time in the Company’s other filings with the SEC. The information contained in this press release is as of the date indicated above. The Company does not undertake any obligation to release publicly any revisions to forward-looking statements to reflect later events or circumstances or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.
About Grupo Financiero Galicia S.A.:
Grupo Financiero Galicia S.A. (Nasdaq: GGAL; Bolsas y Mercados Argentinos S.A./A3 Mercados S.A.: GGAL) is the main financial services holding company in Argentina, which seeks to create long-term value through its companies, providing savings, credit, investment, insurance, advice and digital solutions opportunities to people, companies and organizations, prioritizing customer experience and sustainable development.
With more than 110 years of experience, Grupo Financiero Galicia S.A. is a group of financial services companies in Argentina, integrated by Banco de Galicia y Buenos Aires S.A.U. (Banco Galicia), GGAL Holdings S.A. (Galicia Más Holdings), Tarjetas Regionales S.A. (Naranja X), Sudamericana Holdings S.A. (Galicia Seguros), Galicia Asset Management S.A.U. (Fondos Fima), IGAM LLC (Inviu), Galicia Securities S.A.U. (Galicia Securities), Agri Tech Investment LLC (Nera), Galicia Ventures LP and Galicia Investments LLC (collectively referred to as Galicia Ventures), and Galicia Warrants S.A. (Warrants).
THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THE OFFERING WILL BE NOTIFIED IN ARGENTINA PURSUANT TO AN HECHO RELEVANTE, SOLELY FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES, BUT SUCH NOTICE WILL NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER OF SECURITIES FOR SALE IN ARGENTINA.
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
Former Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (C) waves at the headquarters of Justicialist Party in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on June 10, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]
Argentina’s Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the six-year prison sentence for former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner over irregularities in public works contracts during her time in office.
The country’s highest court rejected an appeal filed by Fernandez’s legal team against lower-court rulings, confirming both the prison term and her lifetime ban from holding public office.
The ruling stemmed from the so-called “Vialidad case,” which investigated the awarding of 51 road construction contracts in the southern province of Santa Cruz to companies owned by businessman Lazaro Baez during the administrations of Nestor Kirchner (2003-2007) and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (2007-2015), the widow of Nestor Kirchner.
Fernandez has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and described the legal proceedings as politically motivated persecution.
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
China and the United States have over the past two days conducted professional, rational, in-depth and candid exchanges, said a senior Chinese official on Tuesday.
Li Chenggang, China international trade representative with the Ministry of Commerce and vice minister of commerce, made the remarks when briefing the press following the first meeting of the China-U.S. economic and trade consultation mechanism held in London.
The two sides have agreed in principle the framework for implementing consensus between the two heads of state during their phone talks on June 5, as well as those reached at Geneva talks, Li said.
It is hoped that progress made at the London meeting will be conducive to strengthening trust between China and the United States, and to further promoting the steady and healthy development of economic and trade ties between the two countries, according to him.
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
China’s Ministry of Commerce announced Tuesday that it would extend the duration of an anti-dumping investigation into pork and relevant products originating from the European Union (EU).
Given the complexity of the case, and in accordance with relevant regulations, the ministry has decided to further extend the probe until Dec. 16, 2025, the ministry said in a statement on its website.
The ministry initiated the investigation on June 17 last year.
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
Customers shop at a Walmart store in Los Angeles County, California, the United States, May 20, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]
The World Bank slashed global economic growth forecasts on Tuesday citing heightened trade tensions and policy uncertainty.
The turmoil resulted in lower growth forecasts in nearly 70 percent of all economies across all regions and income groups, according to the latest bi-annual Global Economic Prospects report issued on Tuesday.
The report cut the 2025 global economic growth forecast to 2.3 percent from 2.7 percent in January, 2025 with the 2026 growth forecast lowered to 2.4 percent from 2.7 percent.
Advanced economies are expected to see an expansion of 1.2 percent in 2025, down from 1.7 percent in earlier forecasts while the growth forecast with emerging market and developing economies was lowered by 0.3 percentage points to 3.8 percent in 2025.
In particular, the United States is expected to grow by 1.4 percent in 2025, 0.9 percentage points less than previous forecast and only half of the 2.8 percent growth in 2024.
Both the Euro Area and Japan are expected to grow 0.7 percent this year, 0.3 percentage points and 0.5 percentage points lower from previous estimates, respectively, while China’s growth forecasts for both 2025 and 2026 remain unchanged.
The world economy is once more running into turbulence while a “soft landing” appeared to be in sight only six months ago, said the report.
“Without a swift course correction, the harm to living standards could be deep,” warned the report.
“Outside of Asia, the developing world is becoming a development-free zone,” said Indermit Gill, the World Bank Group’s Chief Economist and Senior Vice President for Development Economics.
Gill highlighted slower economic and investment growth in developing economies in comparison with recording-making debt levels.
Progress by emerging market and developing economies in closing per capita income gaps with advanced economies and reducing extreme poverty is anticipated to remain insufficient and the outlook largely hinges on the evolution of trade policy globally, said the report.
The global economy is expected to see a tepid recovery in 2026 and 2027 but world output would remain materially below projections made in January, 2025.
However, growth could turn out to be lower if trade restrictions escalate or if policy uncertainty persists, which could also result in a build-up of financial stress, according to the report.
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
OpenAI on Tuesday announced the launch of o3-pro, the company’s most advanced reasoning artificial intelligence (AI) model to date.
O3-pro is a version of OpenAI’s o3, a reasoning model first introduced earlier this year. Reasoning models solve problems step by step, making them more reliable in fields such as physics, mathematics, and computer programming.
The o3-pro model is available starting Tuesday for ChatGPT Pro and Team users, replacing the previous o1-pro model. Enterprise and Edu users will gain access the following week, according to OpenAI. O3-pro is also now live in OpenAI’s developer API as of Tuesday afternoon.
The model is priced at 20 U.S. dollars per million input tokens and 80 dollars per million output tokens in the API. One million input tokens are approximately equivalent to 750,000 words.
“In expert evaluations, reviewers consistently preferred o3-pro over o3 in every tested category — especially in key areas like science, education, programming, business, and writing assistance,” OpenAI stated. “Reviewers also rated o3-pro consistently higher for clarity, comprehensiveness, instruction-following, and accuracy.”
O3-pro has access to a range of tools, including web browsing, file analysis, visual reasoning, Python execution, and personalized memory-based responses, according to the company.
In internal testing, o3-pro achieved impressive results in widely used AI benchmarks. On AIME 2024, which assesses mathematical ability, o3-pro outperformed Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro. It also surpassed Anthropic’s Claude 4 Opus on GPQA Diamond, a benchmark for PhD-level science knowledge, the company reported.
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
Uncertainty remained high among U.S. small businesses in May, according to data released Tuesday from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).
“Although optimism recovered slightly in May, uncertainty is still high among small business owners,” said NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg. “While the economy will continue to stumble along until the major sources of uncertainty are resolved, owners reported more positive expectations on business conditions and sales growth.”
According to the small business optimism index, a net 1 percent of small business owners viewed current inventory stocks as “too low” in May, up 7 points from the month prior and the highest reading since August 2022.
This was the largest monthly increase in the survey’s history.
The net percent of owners expecting better business conditions rose 10 points from April to a net 25 percent.
The net percent of owners expecting higher real sales volumes rose 11 points from April to a net 10 percent. This component contributed the most to the small business optimism index’s improvement.
This occured amid President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.
Source: People’s Republic of China in Russian – People’s Republic of China in Russian –
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
In 2024, the State Immigration Administration of the People’s Republic of China issued a total of 2.597 million visas and residence permits to foreigners. One of the recipients of such a document was an Italian woman, Carolina Di Condio from Milan. Since she was responsible for working with Asian markets in the company, the girl began to study Chinese. While studying at a three-month language course in Milan, fate gave her an “international fateful meeting” – meeting a guy from Xiamen (Fujian Province). And after getting married, the girl moved to China to her husband’s small homeland.
“When I first came to Xiamen in 2019, I fell in love with the city at first sight: the sea breeze, the alleys along the streets, the harmony of nature and modernization,” she recalls. The city, in her opinion, perfectly embodies the Swedish philosophy of “lagom” – nothing more, nothing less, just right. “I like late evening walks, but in Italy I could never dare to do this. These moments of calm changed my idea of home.”
Pictured: Carolina in China (Source: personal archives)
However, Xiamen has become truly home for her not only because of her love for food or language, but because of the relationships between people: “The people here are very friendly. I have made friends who have become my family. My parents-in-law invite me to the Spring Festival, and the vendors remember my favorite fruits. These little things make me feel like part of the community.”
Energy Minister Simon Watts has announced the Government’s new Solar on Farms initiative, which will support farmers in taking the next step towards installing solar and battery systems, helping them reduce energy costs, increase on-farm resilience, and allow farmers to gain greater control over their power use, leading to increased efficiency and productivity.
The Solar on Farms package includes:
Independent and practical tools and advice to assist farmers
A dedicated help function to guide farmers through the opportunities
Feasibility studies and technology demonstrations tailored to various farm types
Real-life energy data for different farm types, showing how solar energy works in practice
Independent advice on progressing consents and applications with local and regional bodies and Electricity Distribution Businesses
A partnership with the Centre for Sustainable Finance to accelerate access to finance, making it quicker, simpler and easier.
“Kiwi farmers have a long history of adapting, problem-solving and finding ways to be smart with land and resources. Real progress comes from the ground up, from people who understand the land, the seasons, and how to run a business,” Mr Watts says.
“That’s why we want to give farmers more choices and the ability to unlock the cost savings that come with on-farm solar, batteries, and flexible energy systems. However, to achieve this, farmers require the correct information, evidence, tools, and trusted advice.
“That’s where Solar on Farms comes in. It’s a practical support package that helps farmers determine if solar and battery systems are right for them by working with them to navigate the details of installing and leveraging this technology for their businesses. The package provides farmers with direct access to independent advice. It offers solutions tailored to various farm types and energy profiles.
“Farms across New Zealand, especially those using irrigation and other energy-intensive systems, are facing increasingly high and unpredictable energy costs. This adds real pressure to already tight margins.
“On-farm solar and batteries can help reduce that pressure by improving self-sufficiency and lowering exposure to rising energy prices, especially in rural and remote areas. Generating electricity on-farm also creates opportunities to receive revenue from solar electricity back to the grid.
“Early modelling tells us that if 30 per cent of Kiwi farms installed larger systems – of the size we see on some farms already – they could generate as much as 10 per cent of New Zealand’s current electricity demand. This is a real win for the security of our energy supply.”
EECA is leading the delivery of Solar on Farms in collaboration with farmers, sector bodies, and technical experts, and the package of initiatives will be available soon.
Fieldays 2025 also celebrated the launch of Farmlands Flex, a complementary solar on farms product from Farmlands and energy innovator Blackcurrent, with the support of Ara Ake, New Zealand’s energy innovation centre. The product combines solar, batteries and smart software in a fully managed system that enables users to generate, store and manage their energy on-site.
“The Farmlands Flex product includes equipment, flexible demand management software, and takes care of the installation and application processes on behalf of the farmer,” says Mr Watts.
“It is an excellent demonstration of how solar purchasing and installation can be made more efficient.”
Mr Watts also welcomed ASB’s recent announcement of a new 0 percent solar loan aimed at helping farmers secure long-term energy resilience and cost savings.
“I look forward to seeing how products like Farmlands Flex, the ASB SMART solar loan, and our Solar on Farms initiative help set the farming sector up for long-term success.”
Company Announcement P. East Trading Corp. of Bronx, NY is recalling Salted Smoked Split Herring because the product was found to be over 5″ in length and uneviscerated, as such having potential to be contaminated with Clostridium botulinum, a bacterium which can cause life-threatening illness or death. Consumers are warned not to use the product even if it does not look or smell spoiled. The sale of uneviscerated fish over 5″ in length may contain Clostridium botulinum spores as they are more likely to be concentrated in the viscera than any other portion of the fish. Botulism, a potentially fatal form of food poisoning, can cause the following symptoms: general weakness, dizziness, double-vision and trouble with speaking or swallowing. Difficulty in breathing, weakness of other muscles, abdominal distension and constipation may also be common symptoms. People experiencing these problems should seek immediate medical attention. The recalled “Salted Smoked Split Herring” was distributed to retail locations in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut in 18 lbs. wooden boxes with container code Lot 1 PRC5073. The “Salted Smoked Split Herring” is a product of Canada manufactured by Sea Star Seafood Ltd. The product was likely to be repacked by these retail locations in deli-style or other retail packaging. Retail packaging and coding will vary based on location of purchase. A list of locations that received and potentially sold the recalled products can be found below. The “Salted Smoked Split Herring” was sampled by a New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets Food Inspector and subsequent analysis of the product by New York State Food Laboratory personnel confirmed the herring was not properly eviscerated prior to processing. No illnesses have been reported to date in connection with this problem. Consumers that have purchased “Salted Smoked Split Herring”, from the following stores below, are advised not to eat it and should return it to the place of purchase for a full a refund. Consumers with questions may contact P. East Trading Corp. at (718) 991-6070 or Email at peastl@gmail.com or contact Jay Hong, Office Manager. **Retail Locations: PIONNER SUPERMARKET, Newark NJJOE’S MARKET #3, Irvington NJKEYFOOD SUPERMARKET, Laurelton NYHAPPY FRUIT MARKET, Teaneck NJEXTRA SUPER MARKET, East Orange NJSUPER FRESH, Irvington NJFOOD BAZAAR SUPERMARKET, North Bergen NJFOOD WORLD SUPER FRESH, Middlesex NJFOOD BAZAAR SUPERMARKET, Fairview NJTROPICAL SUN SUPERMARKET, East Orange, NJIDEAL FOOD BASKET, Brooklyn NYWILLIAM’S FARM #2, Yonkers NYS & H FRUITS and VEGETABLES, Bronx NYFOOD BAZAAR SUPERMARKET(Myrtle), Brooklyn NYC TOWN SUPERMARKET, Brooklyn NYKEY FOOD SUPERMARKET, Brooklyn NYAMERICAS FOOD BASKET, Brooklyn NYFOOD BAZAAR SUPERMARKET, Westbury NYMK NY FISH & VEGETABLES, Bronx NYTROPICAL DAIRY FARM CORP., Bronx NYFOOD BAZAAR SUPERMARKET(161 ST), Bronx NYVALUE FRESH MARKET INC, Hollis NYIDEAL FOOD BASKET, Brooklyn NYKEY FOOD FRESH, Brooklyn NYLULUCOCO, INC, Spring Valley NYCHOP SHOP FRESH MEAT MARKET, Brooklyn NYMARKET FRESH, Newburgh NYC TOWN SUPERMARKET, Hempstead NYFAMILY BEST FARM, Brooklyn NYROSEDALE FRUIT, Jamaica NYS WON PROVISION INC, Bronx NYFOOD BAZAAR SUPERMARKEL Hempstead NYSUPER FRESH, Baldwin NYFRUIT TREE FARM, Copiague NYBROTHER’S PRODUCE CO., Bronx NYGOLDEN CITRUS MARKET INC, Brooklyn NYSHOP FAIR SUPERMARKET, Bronx NYY & R FARM INC., Brooklyn NYJOHNS FARM MARKET, Queens NYFOOD BAZAAR SUPERMARKET, New York NYKEY FOOD SUPERMARKET, Far Rockaway NYNEW UTICA FOOD MARKET CORP., Brooklyn NYIDEAL FOOD BASKET, Brooklyn NYJOY BEST FRUIT BROOKLYN NYIDEAL FOOD BASKET SUPERMARKET, BROOKLYN NYZ & H MINI MARKET, BROOKLYN NYYELLOW MARKET, BROOKLYN NYSK FARM EP CORP, BROOKLYN NYK – SUPER MARKET, JAMAICA NYFOOD BAZAAR SUPERMARKET(Mt Vernon), BRONX NYBEST H&H, INC, BRONX NYDK FAMILY PRODUCE, BROOKLYN NYCO CO MARKET INC, BROOKLYN NYMARKET FRESH, MIDDLETOWN NYFOOD BAZAAR SUPERMARKET, BRIDGEPORT CTFOOD BAZAAR SUPERMARKET(JUNIUS), BROOKLYN NYBOGOPA FARMBRIA, QUEENS NYBEST FARM MARKET, BROOKLYN NYGREEN POINT, JAMAICA NYJ & D FARM MARKET CORP., JAMAICA NYFOOD BAZAAR SUPERMARKET(MANHATTAN AVE), BROOKLYN NYMANGO KING FARMERS MARKET, BROOKLYN NYSUPER FRESH SUPERMARKET, BROOKLYN NYGREEN FRUIT – SUTPHIN, JAMAICA NYMERRICK COUNTRY FOODS, QUEENS NYKINGSBRIDGE FARM, BRONX NYASIA SUPERMARKET INC / JD PRODUCE, SYRACUSE NYFOOD BAZAAR SUPERMARKET(57), CORONA NYLIBERTY PRODUCE CORP., RICHMOND HILL NYGOLDEN MANGO FARM, OZONE PARK NYKEY FOOD SUPERMARKET, BROOKLYN NYFOOD BAZAAR SUPERMARKET(163), BRONX NYFOOD BAZAAR SUPERMARKET, TRENTON NJWEST INDIAN FARM MARKET, QUEENS NY
Company Contact Information
Consumers: P. East Trading Corp, or contact Jay Hong, Office Manager (718) 991-6070 peastl@gmail.com
Source: United States Small Business Administration
ATLANTA –The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is reminding eligible private nonprofit (PNP) organizations in Florida of the July 7 deadline to apply for low interest federal disaster loans to offset economic losses caused by Hurricane Helene occurring Sept. 23-Oct. 7, 2024.
The disaster declaration covers the counties in Alachua, Baker, Bradford, Charlotte, Clay, Citrus, Collier, Columbia, Dixie, Duval, Franklin, Gadsden, Gilchrist, Gulf, Hamilton, Hernando, Hillsborough, Jefferson, Lafayette, Lee, Leon, Levy, Liberty, Madison, Manatee, Marion, Nassau Pasco, Pinellas, Putnam, Sarasota, Sumter, Suwannee, Taylor, Wakulla and Union.
Under this declaration, PNPs providing non-critical services of a governmental nature are eligible to apply for both business physical disaster loans and Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDLs) from the SBA. Examples of eligible non-critical PNP organizations include, but are not limited to, food kitchens, homeless shelters, museums, libraries, community centers, schools, and colleges.
PNPs may borrow up to $2 million to repair or replace disaster-damaged or destroyed real estate, machinery and equipment, inventory, and other business assets. Applicants may also be eligible for a loan increase of up to 20% of their physical damages, as verified by the SBA, for mitigation purposes.
EIDLs are available for working capital needs caused by the disaster and are available even if the PNP did not suffer any physical damage. The loans may be used to pay fixed debts, payroll, accounts payable, and other bills not paid due to the disaster.
“SBA loans help eligible small businesses and private nonprofits cover operating expenses after a disaster, which is crucial for their recovery,” said Chris Stallings, associate administrator of the Office of Disaster Recovery and Resilience at the SBA. “These loans not only help business owners get back on their feet but also play a key role in sustaining local economies in the aftermath of a disaster.”
Interest rates are as low as 3.25%, with terms up to 30 years. Interest does not accrue, and payments are not due until 12 months from the date of the first loan disbursement. The SBA sets loan amounts and terms based on each applicant’s financial condition.
To apply online visit sba.gov/disaster. Applicants may also call SBA’s Customer Service Center at (800) 659-2955 or email disastercustomerservice@sba.gov for more information on SBA disaster assistance. For people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability, please dial 7-1-1 to access telecommunications relay services.
The deadline to return economic injury applications is July 7, 2025.
###
About the U.S. Small Business Administration
The U.S. Small Business Administration helps power the American dream of business ownership. As the only go-to resource and voice for small businesses backed by the strength of the federal government, the SBA empowers entrepreneurs and small business owners with the resources and support they need to start, grow or expand their businesses, or recover from a declared disaster. It delivers services through an extensive network of SBA field offices and partnerships with public and private organizations. To learn more, visit www.sba.gov.
Samsung Electronics announced today that it has started rolling out a software update to introduce new features for its Bespoke AI Refrigerators with screens,1 which is launching in 2025. Designed to enhance the user experience, the update includes the Voice ID feature provided by Bixby, which was unveiled at Welcome to Bespoke AI global launch event in March.
“Our primary goal for this year is to realize an AI Home that adapts intuitively to the user,” said Jeong Seung Moon, EVP and Head of the R&D Team for Digital Appliances Business at Samsung Electronics. “We aim to enhance the user experience through continuous software upgrades for existing products, taking us one step closer to a true AI Home experience.”
New Update: Bixby and Samsung TV Plus
The Voice ID feature2 is a new multi-voice recognition function provided by Bixby.3 It identifies users’ voices registered either on the refrigerator or a Galaxy mobile device, enabling personalized features based on the recognized user. This allows consumers to personalize shared home appliances for individual use, offering greater convenience and functionality.
For example, Bixby intelligently switches to each user’s Samsung account based on the recognized user. Users can check their registered schedules on the calendar,4 or their photos5 using simple voice commands. Also, they can trigger an alarm on their phone to check its location, even when the device is set to silent mode.6
The Voice ID feature also enables seamless interactions with the refrigerator screen for users who utilize vision enhancements on their Galaxy mobile phones. Even without a request to switch accounts, Bixby automatically switches accounts with general conversations for these users. It then synchronizes the appliance’s display modes with the settings on the user’s mobile phone, such as color inversion or grayscale.7
Additionally, Samsung has introduced a new way to activate Bixby on the screen. Previously, users could activate Bixby by clicking the Bixby icon on the screen or through voice commands. When the screen is off, an additional option has been added to activate Bixby by double-tapping the display. Users can make the most of this feature by selecting their preferred method in the settings.
The update is being applied to Bespoke AI Refrigerators with AI Family Hub launching in 2025 first,8 with availability coming after the completion of the latest software update on AI Family Hub screens or SmartThings.
Additionally, Samsung plans to gradually apply this update to the Bespoke AI refrigerators with AI Home9 in the second quarter of 2025. For refrigerators with AI Home, the update expands the service area for Samsung TV Plus, as well. Previously available in only South Korea and the United States, the service will extend to Canada, Brazil, Australia, Mexico and India. Thanks to the update, it is expected that consumers will be able to easily enjoy entertainment features right from their kitchen with Samsung TV Plus.
1 Refers to the refrigerators with AI Family Hub, and 9-inch AI Home screens
2 Each user must register for a Samsung Account on screen appliances in advance. Voice ID should be registered either on the refrigerator, or Galaxy mobile devices and then transferred to the refrigerator. (Limited to Galaxy S24 and subsequent models where Voice ID can be registered.)
3 Bixby is Samsung’s brand of Internet of Things (IoT) voice assistant. Bixby service availability may vary depending on the country. Bixby recognizes certain accents/dialects of English (US, UK, Indian), Chinese, Korean, French, German, Italian, Spanish (Spain, Latin America) and Portuguese (Brazil). User interface may change and differ by device. Availability of Bixby features and content providers may vary depending on the country/carrier/language/device model/OS version. A Samsung account log-in and network connection (Wi-Fi or data network) are required.
4 To use calendar feature, users need to either register their schedule directly on the refrigerator or link their mobile phone calendar in advance. Only Google or Microsoft calendars saved under a Google or Microsoft account can be synced with the Bespoke AI Refrigerator with AI Family Hub. (Refrigerators with AI Home support Google Calendar only.)
5 Gallery feature is supported only for users who have saved photos to OneDrive cloud storage via the Samsung Gallery app on a Samsung mobile phone.
6 To enable the service, a preset is required in the SmartThings Find.
7 When a user registers a device through the SmartThings app, a one-time sync notification may appear via a plug-in. If the user signs into their Samsung account on a refrigerator and related settings are stored in the cloud, this data may be transmitted once to the device. Screen settings can be modified at any time, and any changes will be saved and remain in effect unless manually updated.
8 Timeline may vary depending on the service region or model.
9 AI Home refers to the 7’’ or 9’’ LCD screen on the product. Does not mean all services available on the AI Home are AI or generate information or outcome using AI. Certain functions accessible through the AI Home utilize AI-based algorithms, which can be updated periodically to improve accuracy. AI-based algorithms may generate incomplete or incorrect information.
Taieri MP Ingrid Leary reflected on her years in Fiji as a television journalist and media educator at a Fiji Centre function in Auckland celebrating Fourth Estate values and independence at the weekend.
It was a reunion with former journalism professor David Robie — they had worked together as a team at the University of the South Pacific amid media and political controversy leading up to the George Speight coup in May 2000.
Leary, a former British Council executive director and lawyer, was the guest speaker at a gathering of human rights activists, development advocates, academics and journalists hosted at the Whānau Community Centre and Hub, the umbrella base for the Fiji Centre, Auckland Rotuman Fellowship, Asia Pacific Media Network and other groups.
She said she was delighted to meet “special people in David’s life” and to be speaking to a diverse group sharing “similar values of courage, freedom of expression, truth and tino rangatiratanga”.
“I want to start this talanoa on Friday, 19 May 2000 — 13 years almost to the day of the first recognised military coup in Fiji in 1987 — when failed businessman George Speight tore off his balaclava to reveal his identity.
She pointed out that there had actually been another “coup” 100 years earlier by Ratu Cakobau.
“Speight had seized Parliament holding the elected government at gunpoint, including the politician mother, Lavinia Padarath, of one of my best friends — Anna Padarath.
Hostage-taking report “Within minutes, the news of the hostage-taking was flashed on Radio Fiji’s 10 am bulletin by a student journalist on secondment there — Tamani Nair. He was a student of David Robie’s.”
Nair had been dispatched to Parliament to find out what was happening and reported from a cassava patch.
“Fiji TV was trashed . . . and transmission pulled for 48 hours.
“The university shut down — including the student radio facilities, and journalism programme website — to avoid a similar fate, but the journalism school was able to keep broadcasting and publishing via a parallel website set up at the University of Technology Sydney.
“The pictures were harrowing, showing street protests turning violent and the barbaric behaviour of Speight’s henchmen towards dissenters.
“Thus began three months of heroic journalism by David’s student team — including through a period of martial law that began 10 days later and saw some of the most restrictive levels of censorship ever experienced in the South Pacific.”
Leary paid tribute to some of the “brave satire” produced by senior Fiji Times reporters filling the newspaper with “non-news” (such as about haircuts, drinking kava) as an act of defiance.
“My friend Anna Padarath returned from doing her masters in law in Australia on a scholarship to be closer to her Mum, whose hostage days within Parliament Grounds stretched into weeks and then months.
Whanau Community Centre and Hub co-founder Nik Naidu speaking at the Asia Pacific Media Network event at the weekend. Image: Khairiah A. Rahman/APMN
Invisible consequences “Anna would never return to her studies — one of the many invisible consequences of this profoundly destructive era in Fiji’s complex history.
“Happily, she did go on to carve an incredible career as a women’s rights advocate.”
“Meanwhile David’s so-called ‘barefoot student journalists’ — who snuck into Parliament the back way by bushtrack — were having their stories read and broadcast globally.
“And those too shaken to even put their hands to keyboards on Day 1 emerged as journalism leaders who would go on to win prizes for their coverage.”
Speight was sentenced to life in prison, but was pardoned in 2024.
Taieri MP Ingrid Leary speaking at the Whānau Community Centre and Hub. Image: Nik Naidu/APMN
Leary said that was just one chapter in the remarkable career of David Robie who had been an editor, news director, foreign news editor and freelance writer with a number of different agencies and news organisations — including Agence France-Presse, Rand Daily Mail, The Auckland Star, Insight Magazine, and New Outlook Magazine — “a family member to some, friend to many, mentor to most”.
Reflecting on working with Dr Robie at USP, which she joined as television lecturer from Fiji Television, she said:
“At the time, being a younger person, I thought he was a little bit crazy, because he was communicating with people all around the world when digital media was in its infancy in Fiji, always on email, always getting up on online platforms, and I didn’t appreciate the power of online media at the time.
“And it was incredible to watch.”
Ahead of his time She said he was an innovator and ahead of his time.
Dr Robie viewed journalism as a tool for empowerment, aiming to provide communities with the information they needed to make informed decisions.
“We all know that David has been a champion of social justice and for decolonisation, and for the values of an independent Fourth Estate.”
She said she appreciated the freedom to develop independent media as an educator, adding that one of her highlights was producing the groundbreaking 1999 documentary Maire about Maire Bopp Du Pont, who was a Tahitian student journalist at USP and advocate for the Pacific community living with HIV/AIDs.
She became a nuclear-free Pacific campaigner in Pape’ete and was also founding chief executive of the Pacific Islands AIDS Foundation (PIAF).
Leary presented Dr Robie with a “speaking stick” carved from an apricot tree branch by the husband of a Labour stalwart based in Cromwell — the event doubled as his 80th birthday.
In response, Dr Robie said the occasion was a “golden opportunity” to thank many people who had encouraged and supported him over many years.
Massive upheaval “We must have done something right,” he said about USP, “because in 2000, the year of George Speight’s coup, our students covered the massive upheaval which made headlines around the world when Mahendra Chaudhry’s Labour-led coalition government was held at gunpoint for 56 days.
“The students courageously covered the coup with their website Pacific Journalism Online and their newspaper Wansolwara — “One Ocean”. They won six Ossie Awards – unprecedented for a single university — in Australia that year and a standing ovation.”
He said there was a video on YouTube of their exploits called Frontline Reporters and one of the students, Christine Gounder, wrote an article for a Commonwealth Press Union magazine entitled, “From trainees to professionals. And all it took was a coup”.
Dr Robie said this Fiji experience was still one of the most standout experiences he had had as a journalist and educator.
Along with similar coverage of the 1997 Sandline mercenary crisis by his students at the University of Papua New Guinea.
He made some comments about the 1985 Rainbow Warrior voyage to Rongelap in the Marshall islands and the subsequent bombing by French secret agents in Auckland.
But he added “you can read all about this adventure in my new book” being published in a few weeks.
Taieri MP Ingrid Leary (right) with Dr David Robie and his wife Del Abcede at the Fiji Centre function. Image: Camille Nakhid
Biggest 21st century crisis Dr Robie said the profession of journalism, truth telling and holding power to account, was vitally important to a healthy democracy.
Although media did not succeed in telling people what to think, it did play a vital role in what to think about. However, the media world was undergoing massive change and fragmentation.
“And public trust is declining in the face of fake news and disinformation,” he said
“I think we are at a crossroads in society, both locally and globally. Both journalism and democracy are under an unprecedented threat in my lifetime.
“When more than 230 journalists can be killed in 19 months in Gaza and there is barely a bleep from the global community, there is something savagely wrong.
“The Gazan journalists won the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize collectively last year with the judges saying, “As humanity, we have a huge debt to their courage and commitment to freedom of expression.”
“The carnage and genocide in Gaza is deeply disturbing, especially the failure of the world to act decisively to stop it. The fact that Israel can kill with impunity at least 54,000 people, mostly women and children, destroy hospitals and starve people to death and crush a people’s right to live is deeply shocking.
“This is the biggest crisis of the 21st century. We see this relentless slaughter go on livestreamed day after day and yet our media and politicians behave as if this is just ‘normal’. It is shameful, horrendous. Have we lost our humanity?
“Gaza has been our test. And we have failed.”
Dr Robie praised the support of his wife, social justice activist Del Abcede, and family members.
Other speakers included Whānau Hub co-founder Nik Naidu, one of the anti-coup Coalition for Democracy in Fiji (CDF) stalwarts; the Heritage New Zealand’s Antony Phillips; and Multimedia Investments and Evening Report director Selwyn Manning.
Ponsonby’s post office is shutting shop next month despite push back from the local community.
A sign on the storefront, which is at the College Hill end of Ponsonby Road, said the closure would take place on 4 July but the post boxes would be “staying put”.
Ponsonby local and author John Harris said New Zealand Post’s decision to close the store was “ill-considered” and it should “try harder” to cater for the people who use the shop’s services.
“They’ve got to be mindful of the vital role that post shops like this one play in glueing the community together,” Harris said.
“If you go down to the post shop you’ll see it’s buzzing with activity; people popping in to post parcels or to get forms filled out and so forth . . . they’ve got to think about the effect on small communities and this is like gutting the Ponsonby community.”
Viv Rosenberg, a spokesperson for the Ponsonby Business Association, said the group is saddened by the decision to close the shop.
”Our local post office has been part of the fabric of our community in Three Lamps for several years and we regard the team there as part of our Ponsonby family. We are working alongside others to try and keep it open.”
NZ Post general manager consumer Sarah Sandoval said customer data and service patterns were analysed to determine where NZ Post services were best placed.
“The Ponsonby area is well serviced by existing postal outlets, and to remove duplications of services, we’ve decided to make this change.”
The Asia Pacific Report story about the impending Ponsonby post office shop closure published earlier this month. Image: Asia Pacific Report
She also said that there were nearby options available, including on Hardinge Street 1.4km away, and NZ Post Herne Bay, 1km away.
The NZ Post website said “store closures are given very careful consideration”.
“[Reasons for closure] can include a decline in customer numbers or services which significantly affect the economic viability of the store,” NZ Post said.
Harris emailed NZ Post CEO David Walsh expressing his disapproval of the decision to close the shop and requesting it be reconsidered.
He said a response by the NZ Post general manager consumer stated the closure followed a close look at customer data and that there were other stores serving the Ponsonby community, which was an unsustainable way for the business to operate.
“Herne Bay, Hardinge Street and Wellesley Street are either a challenging walk or you hop in the car and add to the grid,” Harris said.
“They’re only thinking about the sustainability of the New Zealand Post itself not the community.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
As Australian cities heat up and dry out, street trees are emerging as frontline defenders of urban liveability.
Street trees make city life more bearable during heatwaves. They also improve human health and wellbeing, filter pollutants and support biodiversity.
But as climate change intensifies droughts and dials up more extreme heat, can urban forests survive in a hotter, drier future?
To find out, we studied how ten of Australia’s most common non-native street trees grow and tolerate drought across seven cities. The familiar species we chose are the well-loved jacaranda and widely planted London plane tree as well as box elder, European nettle tree, honey locust, sweetgum, southern magnolia, callery pear, black locust and Chinese elm.
Unexpectedly, our new research shows several species tolerate drought better than predicted, including jacaranda and London plane. Some even put on growth spurts during droughts of unprecedented duration and heat. But others showed greater sensitivity than we had anticipated, including honey locust and black locust.
As cities plan for a hotter future, our research will help urban planners choose the toughest, most resilient street trees.
Penrith street trees faced the hottest conditions. Author provided
What did we do?
Street trees cool cities both through their shade and by giving off water through transpiration. These effects can lower local temperatures by several degrees, which helps offset the extra heat trapped by roads, rooftops and hard surfaces.
But the trees we rely on for cooling are vulnerable to mounting pressures from climate change. Drought, heatwaves and limited soil and water availability in cities can all threaten tree health, growth and survival.
To test how these species were coping, we chose over 570 street trees in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, as well as Mildura in regional Victoria, Mandurah south of Perth and Parramatta and Penrith in Western Sydney.
We extracted small cores of wood from the trunk, in a process that leaves the tree alive and largely unaffected. The oldest tree we sampled was a 70-year-old southern magnolia in Sydney.
Growth rings in these cores let us reconstruct their growth histories and assess how they responded both to long-term climate patterns and extreme events such as the Black Summer of 2019–20 and the Millennium Drought from 1997–2009.
How resilient are these trees?
What we found was both reassuring and surprising.
Across all seven cities, the fastest average growth for all species was recorded in Mildura in northern Victoria. Overall, the slowest growth was found in the warmest location – Penrith.
Some species behaved predictably. The black locust grew faster in cooler, wetter cities such as Melbourne, as expected, while honey locust and Chinese elms grew more slowly in hotter cities.
But others defied expectations. Species such as London plane and southern magnolia showed consistent growth trends across cities despite the difference in heat, while others varied depending on local conditions.
Crucially, the growth records showed many street trees responded positively to wetter conditions during the warmest months, most likely due to the longer growing season and increased access to water.
Surprisingly, species such as box elder and Callery pear actually increased their growth during the very hot periods over the Black Summer of 2019–20 as well as during wetter La Niña periods in 2021–22. This suggests these species have adapted to warm urban environments – or that care and watering was provided.
During drought, street trees generally demonstrated strong resistance. This means they maintained their growth during dry periods.
But their resilience – measured by their ability to bounce back to pre-drought growth rates – was often limited, especially in drier cities.
While many street trees can withstand short-term stress, this suggests repeated or prolonged droughts can still take a toll on their long-term health.
Interestingly, species identified as vulnerable in climate models did not always show greater sensitivity to drought or climate extremes in our real-world study.
Why? Local conditions and species-level characteristics such as leaf size, wood density and water use strategy may play a significant role in determining which individual trees will thrive as the climate changes.
We also know care provided by council staff or local residents is extremely useful. When trees are irrigated during stressful conditions, they can help get the tree through tough times.
Why no eucalypts?
During their growing season each year, many northern hemisphere trees produce growth rings. These rings make it possible to reliably reconstruct their growth histories using our methods.
But most eucalypts don’t form clear annual growth rings. This is why we didn’t include spotted gums and other common eucalypts seen on city streets.
Eucalypts tend to grow whenever conditions are favourable rather than being constrained by a strict annual cycle. Only a few native species reliably produce datable annual rings, such as snow gums and alpine ash. This is because they live in cold, high elevation areas, where winter consistently limits growth each year. These conditions aren’t found in any major Australian city.
What does this mean for city planners?
Our research shows that species selection matters a great deal.
Some street trees such as jacarandas, London plane and the European nettle tree can thrive even under extreme heat and drought, while honey locust and Chinese elms are more sensitive to local conditions.
Authorities can maximise the benefits of urban forests and reduce tree decline or loss by choosing resilient species and matching them to the specific climate of each city or neighbourhood.
As climate extremes become more common, even resilient species may face new challenges.
Planting and maintaining diverse, climate-adapted urban forests will help ensure our cities remain liveable, healthy, and green in the decades to come.
Mark G Tjoelker receives funding from The Australian Research Council.
Manuel Esperon-Rodriguez, Matthew Brookhouse, and Sally Power do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
