China exported 7.5 percent less in May than a year before and imported 4.5 percent less, the General Administration of Customs said, cutting factory output and adding evidence that the country’s delayed post-COVID rebound has sputtered, which we reported in “China’s Post-COVID Recovery Fizzles” (6 Jun 2023).
Having secured his re-election on 28 May as Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has appointed a new finance minister who promises “rational” fiscal policies.
After a five-month pause in rate increases, the Bank of Canada (BoC) lifted its key rate on 7 June from 4.50 percent to 4.75 percent, its highest since 2001.
The U.S. is expected to follow the United Kingdom’s lead and provide the Ukrainian military with tank rounds with depleted-uranium rounds that can pierce the coat of Russian tanks but raise health concerns for people in areas these munitions are used.
Bitcoin has lost 60 percent of its value after peaking in November 2021. The FTX crypto exchange spectacularly collapsed last November, vaporizing billions of dollars in clients’ holdings. The U.S. is suing exchanges Binance and Coinbase.
Call it more Chokepoint, or crippling “regulation by enforcement”, but the Securities and Exchange Commision (SEC) suing Binance and Coinbase in the space of two days galvanized crypto supporters and Congress last week.
It’s all about decentralization and putting users in control of their data and assets. That’s how Ryan Wyatt of Polygon Labs explained the fundamental importance of blockchain technologies to members of Congress this past week.
While other governments are deliberating how best to regulate AI, China’s leaders are already at work shutting down websites and arresting suspects.
Well, that trend forecast didn’t take long.
On 4 April 2023, in “AI, THE PERFECT AGENT TO REWRITE HUMAN HISTORY,” we predicted that AI would be considered the “perfect agent” to rewrite human history and works of literature.
A joint military project among Australia, the U.K., and U.S. has made an initial test of a swarm of drones equipped with AI.