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Kimmel's ABC show won't air interview with Democrat because of Trump FCC threats

ABC's Jimmy Kimmel said he will be interviewing a Democratic candidate for Senate tonight, but the interview will be on YouTube only and not broadcast on TV because of threats made by the Federal Communications Commission.

Kimmel has been a prime target in the Trump FCC's attacks on ABC and its owner, Disney. In his monologue last night, Kimmel said he'll be interviewing Democrat James Talarico, a state representative who is running against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for a seat in the US Senate.

In previous years, such an interview would have aired on the broadcast show via local stations throughout the country, Kimmel said. This time, it will only be on the Jimmy Kimmel Live YouTube channel in order to prevent further trouble for individual stations that hold FCC licenses, he said.

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© Getty Images | Disney

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The Iran War Is Pushing Global Coal Use to Record Highs

Five years after virtually every world leader agreed to “phase down” the burning of coal for climate reasons, the fuel is more widely used than ever.

© Ahmad Mulia Panjaitan/Associated Press

Coal barges in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, last month.
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Six Chinese AI firms accused of aggressively copying US frontier models

The United States has now named six Chinese AI firms accused of waging industrial-scale attacks distilling US frontier AI model capabilities and perhaps sparing billions in Chinese development costs.

In a joint release Tuesday, the National Security Agency (NSA), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alleged that DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun, and Z.AI have been attacking US models since at least late 2024. The firms “likely” acted with “Chinese government awareness” when extracting capabilities from US models, including variants of Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Grok, agencies said.

“China-based AI companies that conduct industrial-scale distillation against US AI models see significantly shorter AI development timelines and reduced financial expenditures in training a frontier model,” agencies said.

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© Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg

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U.S. to Lend $1.9 Billion to Restart a Shuttered Nuclear Plant in Iowa

No company in the United States has ever restarted a reactor that was seemingly closed for good, but there are now three major efforts underway to do so.

© Nick Rohlman/The Gazette, via Associated Press

The Duane Arnold Energy Center near Palo, Iowa, in January 2025.
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Trump administration to confront Australia over Labor’s social media algorithm plan

White House warns trading partners against ‘imposing digital services taxes, fines, and other forms of extortion’ on US tech sector

The Trump administration will confront Australia over its plan to force digital platforms to take down harmful content and let users opt out of algorithm-generated “for you” feeds.

Big tech companies would be fined more than $100m for breaching the proposed laws and the Australian government is under pressure to raise those fines even further.

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© Photograph: Annabelle Gordon/EPA

© Photograph: Annabelle Gordon/EPA

© Photograph: Annabelle Gordon/EPA

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The White House made a "Tetris" clone. The Tetris Company was not amused.

An anti-immigration-themed adaptation of Tetris was removed from the White House website over the weekend. The move comes days after The Tetris Company disavowed any involvement with the game and said that it "take[s] copyright infringement very seriously."

The White House's "Build the Wall" game asked players to stop a "Zombie Border siege" by stacking Tetris-styled bricks in an attempt to "hold the line." Unlike in Tetris, though, the blocks in "Build the Wall" don't disappear when you complete a line, meaning each brick contributes to an impassable barrier for the pixel-art "zombies" marching in from the "Southern Border." That change makes the gameplay pretty uninteresting for anything but cheap propaganda, and it also means that every game quickly and ironically ends with a "Border Breached" message when the blocks inevitably fill up the well.

Amerika Garcia Grewal, co-director of Texas migrant rights group Frontera Federation, told AFP last week that the makers of the game "have lost touch with what it means to be human and care for others."

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© WhiteHouse.gov / Internet Archive

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Musk review – epic study of the world’s richest and most banal man

Venice film festival: Alex Gibney interviews former colleagues, wives, the trillionaire’s father and a CG avatar in this absorbing documentary

‘Elon is a nuke.” The speaker is Ashley St Clair, a former conservative Maga influencer and one of Elon Musk’s former girlfriends-slash-baby mommas.

She is a fascinating expert witness in Alex Gibney’s four-hour epic study of the world’s richest and dullest man: the overgrown brattish South-African-born trillionaire plutocrat, ersatz visionary and Trump courtier who owns Tesla cars, SpaceX rocket ships, Starlink satellites on which nation states’ military capabilities are increasingly reliant, X (formerly Twitter) which shapes the collective incel id of billions and GrokAI whose vast server farms daily guzzle oceans of precious water.

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© Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP

© Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP

© Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP

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The U.S. Wants the Oil From These 17 Venezuelan Fields

A private oil company has struck a deal with the Trump administration to develop 17 areas in Venezuela, an effort that experts say will take years and billions of dollars.

© The New York Times

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The Great Reset | An AI Initiated False Flag Attack Could Be Used to Engineer a Global Crash to Bring About a Digital Future

A coming AI engineered financial crash that destroys the US dollar may be used to introduce a digital token / stable coin benefitting one family's interests. This Great Reset privatizes the monetary system putting us all into a digital prison. Awareness and action against these developments is now urged.

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Patagonia Sues Trump Over Reduction of Bears Ears National Monument in Utah

The outdoor apparel maker joined environmental and Native American groups in challenging President Trump’s reduction of Bears Ears National Monument.

© George Frey/Getty Images

Tourists at Muley Point, looking out on Monument Valley, in Bears Ears National Monument in Utah.
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Chevron Expansion in Venezuela Extends U.S. Influence Over Oil Riches

The U.S. energy giant, which stayed in the country after other Western companies left, will invest $7 billion in the country to more than double its production there.

© Maryorin Mendez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Oil infrastructure in Cabimas, Venezuela. Chevron’s expansion is separate from President Trump’s deal for control of oil reserves in the country.
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Apple Maps now displays ‘Lake America’ after President Trump’s executive order

Apple Maps now displays "Lake America"
Apple Maps now displays “Lake America”

Apple has updated Apple Maps so that U.S. users see Lake Ontario labeled as Lake America, matching a change recorded in the U.S. Geographic Names Information System after President Donald Trump signed an executive order renaming the lake for federal use.

The update appeared on the web version of Apple Maps on Tuesday and is rolling out more broadly. Apple said U.S. users will see “Lake America,” users in Canada will continue to see Lake Ontario, and users elsewhere will see both names. That is the same approach Apple used after the Gulf of Mexico was renamed the Gulf of America on U.S. maps.

Google Maps renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America last week
Google Maps renamed Lake Ontario to Lake America in late August

Google Maps made a similar change for U.S. users over the weekend. Both companies have pointed to official U.S. geographic naming records as the basis for what American users see.

Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes. About 52 percent of its surface area lies in Canada, with the rest in New York. Trump’s order applies to U.S. federal usage and does not require Canada or international bodies to adopt the new name.

The lake rename follows last year’s Gulf of America change, which Apple and Google also reflected for U.S. users. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the president contacted Apple directly about aligning maps with the new official U.S. name.

Apple confirmed the Maps update tracks the Geographic Names Information System listing. For travelers, boaters, and anyone using Apple Maps in the United States, the lake now appears under the name adopted in U.S. federal records.


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MacDailyNews Take: President Trump’s full Executive Order, “Honoring The American History Of The Great Lakes And Renaming Lake Ontario As Lake America,” can be read here.


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The post Apple Maps now displays ‘Lake America’ after President Trump’s executive order appeared first on MacDailyNews.

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Google Maps renames "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" even faster than US government

Trade talks between the US and Canada broke down last week, leading to a wave of tariffs and retaliatory tariffs. US President Donald Trump also fell back on an old favorite to needle his opponents, signing an executive order on Thursday to rename Lake Ontario to "Lake America."

The body of water, which straddles the US-Canada border, gave its name to the Canadian province rather than the other way around. Regardless, the US government now refers to this great lake as Lake America—or it will soon. Official US government maps have yet to be updated, but Google wasted no time adopting the new, Trumpian name.

Google began rolling out this change for US users on Saturday. The company posted a brief update on its Google Maps blog, noting that it follows the US Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) for its maps, so the company implies it had no choice but to rename Lake Ontario in Google Maps, which is the most popular mapping platform in the US by a wide margin.

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© Google

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Trump’s Venezuelan Oil Deal Relies on a Powerful and Divisive Partner

The administration will work with a private Venezuelan oil company that has close ties to the country’s government.

© Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times

Venezuela is believed to have one of the world’s largest reserves of oil but it produces very little oil because of mismanagement, corruption and U.S. sanctions.
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