The Petersburg Post
Top News Stories for Friday, January 30th 2026
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Senate Rejects Bill To Keep Government Open Past Saturday The Senate voted Thursday against keeping the government open past Saturday—with Democrats refusing to fund the Department of Homeland Security unless reforms are enacted in the wake of Alex Pretti's shooting. The Senate voted 45-55 to reject the funding plan, with seven Republicans voting alongside all Democrats against the legislation, falling short ...
Source: forbes.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
While the hype and pace of change that artificial intelligence has brought might seem really fast to many, this breakneck evolution may have been just the initial proof of concept pointing to where AI will have its real and lasting impact. That's because AI is moving past traditional use cases focused on chatbots and prompting towards environments dominated by AI agents – automated, proactive systems capable ...
Source: spiceworks.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By ALEX VEIGA, Associated Press The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate edged up for the second week in a row, but remains just above its lowest level in more than three years. The benchmark 30-year fixed rate mortgage rate rose to 6.1% from 6.09% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. One year ago, the rate averaged 6.95%. Borrowing costs on 15-year ...
Source: orlandosentinel.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
EVs that were once industry-leading have long since been left behind. Yesterday afternoon, following the end of trading on Wall Street for the day, Tesla published its financial results for 2025 . They weren't particularly good: Profits were almost halved, and revenues declined year on year for the first time in the company's history. The reasons for the company's troubles are myriad. CEO Elon Musk's bankrolling of ...
Source: arstechnica.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Jamie Dimon's bank joins Bank of America, Steak 'n Shake and other major employers in announcing the $1,000 match JPMorgan Chase announced Wednesday it will match the government's $1,000 contribution to the proposed "Trump Accounts" for children of its U.S. employees. The bank said it will deposit an additional $1,000 into the Trump Accounts of children born to eligible employees between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, ...
Source: foxbusiness.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
BERLIN — President Trump is turning his attention back to Iran, which he is threatening with more military strikes "with great power, enthusiasm, and purpose." He suggested that the strikes would come if Iran did not agree to various demands, including a deal to end its nuclear enrichment program. "Time is running out" for Iran to negotiate such a deal, Trump warned Wednesday. Trump — and Israel — ...
Source: bostonglobe.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Dow on Thursday said it is planning to cut approximately 4,500 jobs as the chemicals maker shifts its emphasis toward artificial intelligence and automation. The company anticipates incurring severance costs of about $600 million to $800 million, in addition to $500 million to $700 million in other one-time costs. Dow marks the latest corporation to announce significant job cuts, with Amazon on Wednesday ...
Source: cbsnews.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. The optimistic story about the FBI's surprising Wednesday raid on Fulton County, Georgia, voting offices to seize ballots and electronic materials related to the 2020 election is that it's another instance of the United States Department of Justice and other parts of the federal government indulging in Donald ...
Source: slate.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Days after ordering the leader of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to appear before him, a federal judge in Minnesota has ripped into the agency, accusing it of violating roughly 100 court orders since the start of 2026. "ICE is not a law unto itself," Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz declared in a relatively terse four-page order on Wednesday. While acknowledging that the Trump ...
Source: lawandcrime.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
– The Justice Department has charged a man who squirted apple cider vinegar on Democratic U.S. Rep. at an event in Minneapolis, according to court papers made public Thursday. The man , Anthony Kazmierczak, faces a charge of forcibly assaulting, opposing, impeding and intimidating Omar, according to a complaint filed in federal court. Authorities determined that the substance was water and apple cider ...
Source: news4jax.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins says "enhanced" operations by Immigration and Custom Enforcement in Maine have ended. In a news release, Collins says Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told her that the surge of ICE agents that began recently is over and that the agency will continue "normal operations that have been ongoing for many years." "While the Department of Homeland Security does not ...
Source: wbur.org
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Sean Grayson, a former Illinois sheriff's deputy convicted of second-degree murder for the 2024 death of Sonya Massey, was sentenced Thursday to 20 years in prison followed by two years of supervised probation. In court Grayson gave a statement following his defense, for the first time admitting wrongdoing against Massey, a 36-year-old Black mother of two who had called 911 about a possible prowler outside her ...
Source: nbcnews.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
The Pro Football Hall of Fame released a statement one day after news first broke that former Patriots coach Bill Belichick was not going to be a first-ballot entrant . The release, which did not mention Belichick, centered around the voting process and stressed that if a voter violated the selection process — which includes removing the voter — action would be taken. Here is the full statement: "The ...
Source: bostonglobe.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Three newly discovered videos show the Minneapolis ICU nurse being tackled by federal agents in a prior confrontation Videos emerged on Wednesday of a previous confrontation between Alex Pretti and federal agents, 11 days before the ICU nurse was fatally shot by federal officers in Minneapolis . About two minutes of video, published on Wednesday by The News Movement, a digital news outlet, shows an incident on 13 ...
Source: theguardian.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
An outbreak of the Nipah virus in India's eastern state of West Bengal has heightened concerns in China and several Southeast Asian countries, prompting them to tighten health screening operations at airports as millions prepare to travel for the Lunar New Year holiday. Since December 2025, two confirmed cases of the virus have been reported in West Bengal, India's health ministry said on Wednesday. The ministry ...
Source: aljazeera.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Meta wowed Wall Street with improvements in ad targeting fueled by AI alongside huge investment. Microsoft had less to show for its billions spent Big tech earnings so far this week have sent a clear warning: investors are willing to overlook soaring spending on artificial intelligence if it fuels strong growth, but are quick to punish companies that fall short. The contrast was clear in Thursday's stock market ...
Source: theguardian.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
China agrees visa waiver for British citizens as countries sign agreements on closer economic cooperation The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping , has said the UK's relationship with his country has gone through "twists and turns" over the years but that a more "consistent" approach is in both their interests. Before talks with Keir Starmer during the first visit to China by a British prime minister in eight years, Xi said ...
Source: theguardian.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
The Trump administration is barred from arresting and detaining legal refugees in Minnesota , a federal district court has ruled. Earlier this year, amid a widespread immigration crackdown in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — along with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) — began an effort aimed at targeting and reexamining the legal status of ...
Source: lawandcrime.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Google says it's exploring the option of letting publishers opt out of having their website content used to generate AI Overviews at the top of search results. In a blog post published on Thursday, the company addressed its approach to the controls it provides to websites in order to manage how their content appears in Search AI features. The post was Google's response to the fact that the UK's Competition and ...
Source: cnet.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Humans can't live without lungs. But Ankit Bharat's patient did for 48 hours. Reporting January 29 in the Cell Press journal Med , surgeons describe how they removed a patient's infected lungs and built "artificial lungs" to keep him alive until a double lung transplantation was available. The work shows how the approach may serve as a life-saving bridge to ...
Source: news-medical.net
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
The iPhone maker reported first-quarter earnings after market close Apple released its first quarter earnings on Thursday, exceeding Wall Street's expectations and seeing its revenue skyrocket 16% from the same time last year. "Apple is proud to report a remarkable, record-breaking quarter, with revenue of $143.8bn," Tim Cook, the company's CEO, said in a statement . "iPhone had its best-ever quarter driven by ...
Source: theguardian.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Polar bears on Norwegian islands fatter and healthier despite ice loss, scientists say Scientists expected the opposite, but polar bears in the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard have become fatter and healthier since the early 1990s, all while sea ice has steadily declined due to climate change. Polar bears rely on sea ice as a platform from which to hunt the seals that they rely on for blubber-rich meals. ...
Source: bbc.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
A Waymo driverless vehicle struck a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica, California. The company voluntarily reported the incident to federal auto safety regulators on the same day, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is now investigating. In a separate incident in Los Angeles, a Zeekr vehicle operated in manual mode by a human sped through a one-way residential street near ...
Source: cnbc.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
The Trump administration's deployment of troops to five different U.S. cities last year cost roughly $496 million through the end of December, according to estimates released by the Congressional Budget Office this week. Keeping Guard forces deployed at the same levels as late December could cost about $93 million per month going forward, the nonpartisan office estimated. The Pentagon in June 2025 deployed ...
Source: cbsnews.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
You can now listen to Fox News articles! President Donald Trump appealed to Iraqis on Tuesday to not reinstate the controversial former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to a new term because of his alleged corruption and severe mismanagement of the country's economy and security situation. Trump wrote on the Truth Social platform : "I'm hearing that the Great Country of Iraq might make a very bad choice by ...
Source: foxnews.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Federal officials have repeatedly claimed that the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) employees who fatally shot Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti on Saturday did so in the midst of a "riot." The situation, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem said after the shooting, was "a violent riot" where "you have someone showing up with weapons." Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol commander who headed ...
Source: reason.com
Wednesday, Jan 28th, 2026 -
Reading time 4 minutes Last year, Google fueled up its Chrome browser with its Gemini AI model. Now it's pressing on the gas. In what the company is calling a "new era of browsing," Google is introducing a slew of new features that further embeds its Gemini 3 model into its browser, now with a side panel capable of multitasking, integration with Google Apps, and a feature called "auto browse" that can navigate the ...
Source: gizmodo.com
Wednesday, Jan 28th, 2026 -
You can now listen to Fox News articles! Adults who consider themselves "night owls" tend to score lower in cardiovascular health assessments and face a higher risk of heart attack or stroke. That's according to a new study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association, which examined how a person's chronotype — their natural tendency to be active in the morning or evening — ...
Source: foxnews.com
Wednesday, Jan 28th, 2026 -
The Ecuadorian Foreign Affairs Ministry said an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent tried to enter the country's consulate in Minneapolis on Tuesday but was blocked by its staff. "Consulate staff immediately prevented the ICE official from entering the consular building, thereby guaranteeing the protection of the Ecuadorians who found themselves in the consular building in that moment, and activating ...
Source: nbcnews.com
Wednesday, Jan 28th, 2026 -
In Minneapolis and communities nationwide, trust is built on reporting that follows the facts wherever they lead -- even when powerful institutions resist scrutiny. Support journalism that stands firmly for the public's right to know. Already a member? Bruce Springsteen seems equal parts outraged and inspired by the unrest and violence in Minneapolis. So much so that on Saturday — the same day that Alex ...
Source: huffpost.com
Wednesday, Jan 28th, 2026 -
Reading time 3 minutes Six months into its big AI turnaround, Meta believes 2026 will be the year it starts reaping the benefits. The tech giant has spent billions upon billions on Meta Superintelligence Labs, poaching top talent from the likes of OpenAI, Apple, and more in the hopes of revitalizing its failing AI initiatives. The company is hoping to prove that it's finally eating the fruits of that commitment ...
Source: gizmodo.com