Another meeting with convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who was a defense attorney for Donald Trump in the court case in which he was convicted on 34 felony counts, met Thursday with convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell. She was the girlfriend and colleague of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence, in prison in Tallahassee, Florida, in connection with her and Epstein’s sexual activities involving under-age girls. Blanche was due to question her for a second day today. Maxwell’s attorney said she answered all questions. During her trial, Maxwell did not testify.
Birthday book reported in possession of Epstein estate
The 50th birthday book that was prepared for sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is reported to be in the possession of Epstein’s estate. It’s also reported that multiple copies of the book exist. The book contains birthday wishes from various friends and acquaintances. Donald Trump has denied having prepared the page in the book attributed to him that is reported to carry his signature and a sketch of a naked woman. The Wall Street Journal reports that the book also has a page from Bill Clinton with birthday greetings for Epstein. Unlike the page attributed to Trump, Clinton’s page reportedly does not contain any risqué comments.
Violence continues along Thailand-Cambodia border
More than 100,000 civilians have been displaced following a second day of violence along the disputed 500-mile land border between Thailand and Cambodia. At least 16 people were also reportedly killed, officials from both countries said. Tensions between the Southeast Asian neighbors have been boiling for months. Around 4:30 a.m. local time on Friday, clashes broke out with Cambodian troops using small arms and heavy weapons and Thai troops responding with artillery fire. On Thursday, when Thailand deployed fighter jets to attack Cambodian military targets, Cambodia vowed to “respond decisively.”
Trump meets with Powell
President Trump met with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell yesterday and toured a building being refurbished for the Federal Reserve. Trump told Powell that interest rates must come down. Trump also said that he has no plans to fire Powell, after months of threatening to do just that because Powell has resisted Trump’s efforts to control Fed policy. During the tour, Trump pulled out a piece of paper that said the Fed’s program to modernize its real estate was going to cost more than $3 billion. Powell informed Trump that the information he had was incorrect. Powell, after looking at the paper Trump had, pointed out that one building mentioned in the paper had actually been finished five years ago and should not be included as part of the current project. .
Kennedy’s HHS has begun using artificial intelligence
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) headed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has started using artificial intelligence. Behind the scenes, the practice has caused some alarm. An AI project known as Elsa is supposed to help speed up drug and medical device approvals at the FDA, a division of HHS. Six current and former FDA officials told CNN that Elsa can be useful for generating meeting notes and summaries, or email and communiqué templates, but it also invented studies and misrepresented research. In at least one instance — when an employee asked Elsa to generate something for a project — it insisted that the research area was not in the FDA’s purview, even though it was. Elsa also cannot help with the lengthy assessment process that agency scientists undertake to determine whether drugs and devices are safe and effective because it can’t access many of the files needed to answer basic questions.
FCC approves Skydance-Paramount merger
The Federal Communications Commission has approved the pending merger between Skydance Media and Paramount Global. Voting 2-1 along party lines, the commissioners gave the go-ahead to the $8 billion deal, which has been mired in allegations of political interference stemming from President Trump’s scathing criticism and his lawsuit against Paramount’s CBS News division. But on July 1, Paramount agreed to pay $16 million toward Trump’s future presidential library to resolve his lawsuit about an edit made to a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris before the November presidential election. Paramount insisted that the payout was unrelated to the merger review process. Shortly after the settlement was announced, CBS canceled Stephen Colbert’s late night show. Colbert has been a vocal critic of Donald Trump, but CBS said the cancellation was for financial reasons.
