Author: Elon Mark

On ThursdaY, Reuters published a photo depicting then-United States national security adviser Mike Waltz checking his phone during a cabinet meeting held by President Trump in the White House. If you enlarge the portion of the image that captures Waltz’s screen, it seems to show him using the end-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal. But if you look more closely, a notification on the screen refers to the app as “TM SGNL.” During a White House cabinet meeting on Wednesday, then, Waltz was apparently using an Israeli-made app called TeleMessage Signal to message with people who appear to be top US…

A powerful alliance of armed gangs that has plunged Haiti into violence and launched attacks against state institutions was designated on Friday as a terrorist group by the Trump administration.The move is likely to worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis in Haiti, experts said, since gangs control much of the country’s economy and infrastructure, including ports and major roads, and extort businesses and the local population.President Trump’s designation gives the U.S. broad power to impose economic penalties on the criminal groups, and potentially even to take military action. But it also allows sanctions to be imposed on anyone whom the…

The $10 billion container shipping industry, the one that moves boxes full of everything and anything around global seas, has this phenomenon called “blank sailings.”To understand the term of art, think of the world-spanning ocean-bound trade economy like a bus system, where several buses—or ships—are making stops along a set route. If the people running the bus system—or the shipping company—realize there’s not enough passenger demand for their bus to run the route in the middle of the day, they’ll cancel one of those circuits. Same with shipping companies: If they realize there aren’t enough bookings to justify a container…

The Trump administration designated a Cambodian financial conglomerate as a money-laundering operation on Thursday, taking the first step to sever its access to the American financial system.The Treasury Department said that since August 2021, the company, Huione Group, and its affiliates had laundered $4 billion for criminals, including hackers in North Korea and scammers in Southeast Asia.“Huione Group serves as a significant node of the money laundering ecosystem,” the Treasury said in a detailed report of the company’s operations.A New York Times investigation in March found that Huione’s group of companies were at the heart of a global money laundering…

Entrepreneurship and innovation are vital to the economy. Entrepreneurs who start and grow their own businesses create job opportunities, often by uniquely utilizing existing resources or introducing new technologies, products, and services to market. The process promotes research and development by forcing established brands to create innovations that compete with emerging ones. Those results can lead to new divisions or departments, spurring even more job opportunities. By studying entrepreneurship and innovation, you can contribute to that growth and equip yourself with the characteristics needed for success. Yet, what “success” looks like depends on your career aspirations. You might want to…

The causes of the power outage that left millions in Spain and Portugal without electricity on Monday have yet to be fully determined, though service has now been restored across 99 percent of the Iberian peninsula. Red Eléctrica, the public company in charge of operating Spain’s transmission infrastructure, has preliminarily ruled out a cyberattack, human error, or unusual weather or atmospheric conditions as a cause of the outage. The company points out that the incident could have originated from two “disconnections of generation,” possibly linked to the inherent volatility of renewable sources.Specialists emphasize that this type of total blackout—an exceptional…

The death toll from this week’s outbreak of sectarian violence in Syria has surpassed 100, a war monitoring group said on Thursday after the unrest spread to new areas.The violence erupted on Tuesday in the city of Jaramana after an audio clip circulated on social media purporting to be of a cleric from the Druse minority insulting the Prophet Muhammad. The cleric denied the accusation, and Syria’s Interior Ministry said that its initial findings showed that he was not the person in the clip.Nevertheless, armed Sunni Muslim extremist groups began attacking areas including Jaramana with large Druse populations on the…

Even security experts can be fooled. In July 2024, Knowbe4, a Florida-based company that offers security training, discovered that a new hire known as “Kyle” was actually a foreign agent. “He interviewed great,” says Brian Jack, KnowBe4’s chief information security officer. “He was on camera, his résumé was right, his background check cleared, his ID cleared verification. We didn’t have any reason to suspect this wasn’t a valid candidate.” But when his facilitator—the US-based individual giving him cover—tried to install malware on Kyle’s company computer, the security team caught on and shut him out.Back in london, Simon Wijckmans couldn’t let…

It was well after 2 a.m., but an aide to Vice President JD Vance was trying to roust a senior Ukrainian official out of his bed in a Munich hotel. He wanted a face-to-face meeting to close a deal letting the United States extract valuable minerals in Ukraine, a priority of the new president, Donald J. Trump.It had to be done that night, the aide said, before Mr. Vance was scheduled to meet the next day with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at a trans-Atlantic security conference. The Ukrainian protested that it was late and refused to leave his room,…

I’m given the following scenario: I’m at a friend’s housewarming party and accidentally break a vase that turns out was a gift for the host brought by 35-year-old Caleb, a financial analyst from Annapolis, Maryland. “How will you handle this?” the screen reads. After responding to Caleb—a very eager robot with a deep voice who called me “hon” in nearly every sentence—with one-word answers that indicated my discomfort with seducing a computer, Tinder suggests that I “engage more in shared interests,” “provide more details about your hobbies,” and “show enthusiasm in the conversation.”Announcement of the game was met with scorn…