Month: January 2025

During a virtual hearing on Tuesday afternoon, a federal judge temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s freeze on all federal foreign and domestic aid. U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan issued a brief administrative stay, which came minutes before the funding freeze was scheduled to go into effect.  Judge  AliKhan said that the stay preserves federal disbursements at least until Monday at 5 p.m. EST.

Earlier on Tuesday, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget has instructed all federal agencies to cease spending on any financial assistance programs if they suspect it might conflict with President Trump’s recent executive orders. A memo from the White House budget office ordered a pause on all federal grants and loans, potentially impacting trillions in government spending and halting public programs that affect millions of Americans.  The memo stated that federal departments faced a 5 p.m. deadline Tuesday to cease spending on any financial assistance programs (per NBC NEWS.)

White House Office of Management and Budget acting director Matthew Vaeth said in the memorandum that federal agencies “must temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance.”  The memo specified the pause will not affect Social Security or Medicare benefits, nor does it include “assistance provided directly to individuals,” but it applies to other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.

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In the first White House press briefing of President Donald Trump’s second administration on Tuesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the mystery drone sightings over New Jersey and along the East Coast late last year were “authorized to be flown by the FAA.   The drone activity was first reported on Nov. 19 by the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office, and caused temporary flight restrictions in New Jersey throughout November/December 2024.

Leavitt said: “I do have news directly from the president of the United States that was just shared with me in the Oval Office, from President Trump directly, an update on the New Jersey drones. After research and study, the drones that were flying over New Jersey in large numbers were authorized to be flown by the FAA for research and various other reasons. Many of these drones were also hobbyists, recreational and private individuals that enjoy flying drones. In time, it got worse due to curiosity. This was not the enemy.”

In December, mysterious drone sightings in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and other states on the East Coast prompted a demand for officials to find the source of the flying objects, some of which were spotted near military installations.  Trump suggested at the time that the Biden administration knew more than it was revealing to the public about the drones: “they know where it came from and where it went. “And for some reason, they don’t want to comment. And I think they’d be better off saying what it is. Our military knows and our president knows. And for some reason, they want to keep people in suspense.”

The Biden administration shared a statement from the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the FAA and the Department of Defense on Dec. 16 that said while there were indeed drones flying over New Jersey, they constituted a “combination” of lawful aerial activity. Their joint statement read: “having closely examined the technical data and tips from concerned citizens, we assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones.”

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After initial reports of a magnitude of 4.1. – and then 3.9 – earthquake striking the area, it was later confirmed that a 3.8 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of New England on Monday morning. A USGS map showing that the shaking was felt in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and an hour away in Boston, MA. The U.S. Geological Survey wrote on X  “today’s M3.8 near Bar Harbor, Main, reminds us that earthquakes are unusual but not unheard of along the Atlantic Seaboard. If you felt it, or are in the area and didn’t feel it, please let us know!”

According to the United States Geological Survey, the earthquake was 10 kilometers southeast of York Harbor, Maine, occurring at 10:22 a.m. According to local police, homes and businesses in Concord, Massachusetts, reporting feeling the quake. The depth of the earthquake was more than eight miles underground, according to the USGS.  There was no tsunami threat to New England, per the U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center.

John Ebel, a senior scientist with the Weston Observatory at Boston College, told WBZ-TV: “This is like a once-in-every-five-years kind of earthquake. We don’t sit on any active fault lines. But again for our area [it] is really significant.”

The event on Monday was the strongest earthquake measured in the northeastern United States since April, when a 4.8-magnitude earthquake struck near Lebanon, New Jersey. According to USGS records, that shaking was the most intense in the Northeast in more than a decade.

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Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek said on Monday that its new, popular app was hit with a cyber-attack, forcing the company to temporarily limit registrations. The attack came after the DeepSeek AI assistant app skyrocketed to the top of Apple’s App Store, taking over rival OpenAI’s coveted spot as the most-downloaded free app in the U.S. on Apple’s App Store, dethroning ChatGPT for DeepSeek’s own AI Assistant.

DeepSeek said on its status page that it started to investigate the issue late Monday night Beijing time; after two hours of monitoring, the company said it was the victim of a “large-scale malicious attack”. While DeekSeek limited registrations, existing users were still able to log on as usual. The app is now allowing registrations again; the status page reads: “DeepSeek-R1 is now live.”

DeepSeek has generated a lot of buzz in recent weeks as a fast-growing rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and other leading AI tools.  Its quick rise on Monday sent technology stocks tumbling; Nvidia, the AI chip maker and most valuable US company, saw its stocks plummet by 13.6% in early trading.

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