The Petersburg Post
Top News Stories for Wednesday, February 4th 2026
Wednesday, Feb 4th, 2026 -
Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent Notifications can be managed in browser preferences. Swipe for next article House Speaker Mike Johnson insists that Trump was just 'expressing his frustration' with some Democrat-leaning parts of the country with alleged election integrity issues President Donald Trump isn't backing off his calls for Republicans to "nationalize" U.S. voting , effectively ...
Source: independent.co.uk
Wednesday, Feb 4th, 2026 -
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Priyanka Kuvalekar, a 31-year-old UX research lead at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington. It's been edited for length and clarity. I joined Microsoft in April 2025 as a senior UX researcher. I lead research for Microsoft Teams Calling and related AI experiences. My path to this job wasn't typical. I spent five years studying architecture in college, not computer ...
Source: businessinsider.com
Wednesday, Feb 4th, 2026 -
Trump announced that a trade deal had been reached with India, claiming that New Delhi would stop buying Russian oil as part of the agreement. India has not commented on that, and Russia said it has received no word from New Delhi about halting oil purchases. Analysts are skeptical that India will stop buying Russian oil completely due to the economic ramifications. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian ...
Source: cnbc.com
Wednesday, Feb 4th, 2026 -
– Despite rare negotiations between Democrats and President Donald Trump, a bipartisan agreement on new restrictions for in the next two weeks will be exceedingly difficult — or even "an impossibility," as Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune said. Congress is discussing potential new rules for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection after officers shot and ...
Source: news4jax.com
Wednesday, Feb 4th, 2026 -
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed a roughly $1.2 trillion government funding bill Tuesday that ends the partial federal shutdown that began over the weekend and sets the stage for an intense debate in Congress over Homeland Security funding. The president moved quickly to sign the bill after the House approved it with a 217-214 vote. "This bill is a great victory for the American people," Trump said. ...
Source: military.com
Wednesday, Feb 4th, 2026 -
TUCSON, Ariz. — Investigators found signs of forced entry at the Arizona home of "Today" show host Savannah Guthrie's mother, a person familiar with the investigation said Tuesday, as the host asked for prayers to help bring back the 84-year-old, who is believed to have been taken against her will . The host described her mother, Nancy Guthrie , as "a woman of deep conviction, a good and faithful servant" in ...
Source: cleveland.com
Wednesday, Feb 4th, 2026 -
After two decades and two stints as Walt Disney Co. boss, Bob Iger finally is hanging up the reins. Disney this week tapped 54-year-old parks chief Josh D'Amaro to succeed Iger as chief executive. The handoff is set for March 18, at the company's annual investor meeting, with Iger staying on as a senior advisor and board member until his December retirement. The changing of the guard atop one of America's iconic ...
Source: latimes.com
Wednesday, Feb 4th, 2026 -
China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has recently jointly released the Safety Technical Requirements for Automobile Door Handles. The regulation mandates that all vehicles sold in China, except for tailgates, must be equipped with mechanical exterior door handles and interior door handles. Even if the vehicle is locked due to an accident or power failure, the doors must still be able to be ...
Source: technode.com
Wednesday, Feb 4th, 2026 -
Feb. 4 (UPI) -- Authorities in Britain confirmed Wednesday that a criminal investigation has been launched into Britain's former ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson , over allegations that he leaked government information to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein . The 72-year-old was fired as Britain's envoy to Washington in September following revelations of his friendship with the late disgraced ...
Source: upi.com
Wednesday, Feb 4th, 2026 -
A Doberman pinscher named Penny is America's top canine after earning the title of best in show on Tuesday night at the 150th Westminster Kennel Club dog show in New York. Judge David Fitzpatrick tapped the four-year-old female with the mirror-sheen black-and-rust coat from Ontario, Canada, over a field of six other group champions, among them a Chesapeake Bay retriever named Cota, who was awarded reserve best in ...
Source: theguardian.com
Wednesday, Feb 4th, 2026 -
– Greek coast guard boats and a helicopter scoured the sea near an eastern Aegean island on Wednesday after an overnight collision between a patrol boat and a people and injured more than two dozen. Accotrding to the coast guard, initial information indicated most of those on board the speedboat were from Afghanistan. Twenty-four people, including 11 children, were hospitalized on the island of Chios ...
Source: news4jax.com
Wednesday, Feb 4th, 2026 -
Up to four in ten cancer cases worldwide could be prevented, according to a new global analysis from the World Health Organization (WHO) and its International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). The study examines 30 preventable causes, including tobacco, alcohol, high body mass index, physical inactivity, air pollution, ultraviolet radiation – and for the first time – nine cancer-causing infections. ...
Source: news-medical.net
Wednesday, Feb 4th, 2026 -
To ensure developer control, Xcode creates automatic milestones for every modification, allowing teams to revert the entire project to a pre-agent state. Apple announced Xcode 26.3 on Tuesday, introducing agentic coding tools such as Anthropic's Claude Agent and OpenAI's Codex directly within its app development suite. The Xcode 26.3 Release Candidate became available to all Apple Developers on the developer ...
Source: techbriefly.com
Wednesday, Feb 4th, 2026 -
The deal embeds advanced OpenAI models directly into Snowflake's data platform, enabling secure, AI-powered analytics and agents across major clouds. Snowflake and OpenAI have struck a multi-year, $200 million partnership to bring OpenAI's advanced models, including GPT-5.2, directly into Snowflake's enterprise data platform. The collaboration is designed to let Snowflake's large customer base, more than 12,000 ...
Source: thenextweb.com
Wednesday, Feb 4th, 2026 -
Last Tuesday, CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss announced that the longevity guru Dr. Peter Attia would be a contributor to the network, one of several high-profile hires to mark her takeover. Last Friday, in the latest congressional release of material related to the convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein , Attia's name appeared over 1,700 times, including in emails discussing Epstein's sex life. In the most widely ...
Source: nymag.com
Wednesday, Feb 4th, 2026 -
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday praised the steady expansion of economic cooperation between Russia and China during a video call with Chinese President Xi Jinping, describing the partnership as strategic and mutually beneficial. The talks took place amid China's parallel engagement with Western leaders, even as differences persist over Russia's war in Ukraine. According to news agency AP, Putin said ...
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
Wednesday, Feb 4th, 2026 -
– Envoys from Moscow and Kyiv met in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday for of U.S.-brokered talks on ending the as Russian cluster munitions killed seven people at a market in Ukraine. The delegations from Moscow and Kyiv were joined in the United Arab Emirates by U.S. officials, Rustem Umerov, Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council chief, who was present at the meeting, said on social media. Umerov said the ...
Source: news4jax.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
SpaceX says it wants to deploy an astronomical number of data centres in orbit to supply power for artificial intelligence, but the proposal might not be entirely serious We are only a month into 2026, yet it's already clear what one of the major space stories of the year is going to be: mega-constellations, and the ongoing attempts to launch thousands of satellites into Earth's orbit. The latest development is ...
Source: newscientist.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
Information Commissioner's Office to investigate whether Elon Musk's firms have complied with data protection law Elon Musk's X and xAI companies are under formal investigation by the UK's data protection watchdog after the Grok AI tool produced indecent deepfakes without people's consent. The Information Commissioner's Office is investigating whether the social media platform and its parent broke GDPR, the data ...
Source: theguardian.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
NASA has postponed the earliest launch opportunity for the Artemis 2 mission from February 6 to March following a liquid hydrogen leak during a wet dress rehearsal on February 3. The agency began final preparations for Artemis 2 in early January. The wet dress rehearsal, conducted in the early morning hours of February 3, simulates propellant loading and countdown procedures. The Space Launch System rocket, already ...
Source: techbriefly.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
Washington — Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed to the House Oversight Committee's terms to testify as part of the panel's investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, a last-minute change of heart for the pair who had been defiant as they faced a contempt of Congress vote, the panel's chairman said Tuesday. Hillary Clinton will appear for a deposition on Feb. 26, while the former president will appear on Feb. 27, ...
Source: cbsnews.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is set to welcome Colombian President Gustavo Petro to the White House on Tuesday for talks only weeks after threatening military action against the South American country and accusing the leader of pumping cocaine into the United States. U.S. administration officials say the meeting will focus on regional security cooperation and counternarcotics efforts. And Trump on ...
Source: apnews.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
The family of Virginia Giuffre , one of Jeffrey Epstein 's most vocal accusers who died by suicide in 2025, says they are outraged over the Justice Department's handling of the latest release of the Epstein files. Sky and Amanda Roberts, Giuffre's brother and sister-in-law, say the department failed to protect survivors of Epstein's abuse when releasing the documents. "I mean these are intimate details in these ...
Source: cbsnews.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
Mozilla Firefox has always seemed like the "cool kid" browser option, for the power users who don't want to deal with Google or Microsoft. So perhaps filling it up with "AI" features — you know, the things people are kind of tired of seeing from Google and Apple — might not be winning people over. Mozilla seems to have read the room: Upcoming builds will let you disable "AI" completely. "We've heard ...
Source: pcworld.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro spent Tuesday morning in damage control mode after she invoked the fury of Second Amendment advocates with comments she made threatening to "jail" anyone who brings a gun into Washington D.C. During an interview Monday with her former Fox News colleague Martha MacCallum about a recent decrease in crime in D.C., Pirro bragged ...
Source: mediaite.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
President Trump said his administration is seeking $1 billion in damages from Harvard University, accusing the school of antisemitism and other misconduct and saying the matter should be treated as criminal rather than civil. In a social media post on Monday night, Trump said Harvard had attempted to avoid a large financial settlement through what he described as an inadequate job-training proposal. Trump said the ...
Source: bnonews.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
Reading time 4 minutes OpenAI and Nvidia, the two darlings of AI hype and long-term partners, seem to be having a bit of a falling out. At the center of this rift is a $100 billion Nvidia investment in OpenAI announced in September 2025. As part of the deal, Nvidia would build 10 gigawatts of AI data centers for OpenAI and invest $100 billion in the company in 10 installments, as each gigawatt comes online. In ...
Source: gizmodo.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
Here is where things stand on Wednesday, February 4: Fighting At least two teenagers were killed, and nine other people were injured following a Russian strike targeting the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, regional Governor Ivan Fedorov wrote on the Telegram messaging app. A 24-hour air raid alert was issued in the Zaporizhia region following the attack, which damaged four high-rise apartment ...
Source: aljazeera.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
Kelly Clarkson has announced that her daytime talk show is coming to an end. The former American Idol winner turned TV host and homewares mogul shared a statement confirming that The Kelly Clarkson Show will end its run after seven seasons. In a statement posted on her Instagram on February 2, Clarkson explained that she is stepping away as the host of her Daytime Emmy Award-winning talk show at the end of its ...
Source: southernliving.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
Reading time 3 minutes Researchers investigated historic and current lead exposure by studying an unexpected part of the body: hair. In a study published yesterday in the journal PNAS, researchers analyzed hair clippings from people in Utah (referred to as Utahns, if you can believe it) dating back to 1916. Lead levels before the creation of the United States' Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were ...
Source: gizmodo.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — A 13-year-old boy swam for four hours in cold and choppy waters to save his mother and two younger siblings who had been swept out to sea off the coast of Western Australia. The family, from the state capital Perth, were using kayaks and paddleboards on Friday morning when rough ocean and wind conditions started dragging them out. Teenager Austin Appelbee swam about 4 kilometers ...
Source: apnews.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
We report without fear or favor because our work is sustained by members, not influence. Your support helps ensure the truth is told clearly, even when those in power push back. Join HuffPost today. Already a member? WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. Navy fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone that was approaching the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea, U.S. Central Command said Tuesday, ...
Source: huffpost.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
SPRINGFIELD, Ohio (AP) — A federal judge on Monday blocked the end of protections that have allowed roughly 350,000 Haitians to live in the U.S., dealing President Donald Trump's immigration agenda another legal, though perhaps temporary, setback. U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington granted a request to pause the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians while a lawsuit challenging it ...
Source: pbs.org
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
You can now listen to Fox News articles! Sen. Mitch McConnell , R-Ky., was hospitalized Monday evening with flu-like symptoms, his office announced. "In an abundance of caution, after experiencing flu-like symptoms over the weekend, Senator McConnell checked himself into a local hospital for evaluation last night," a spokesperson for McConnell said in a statement. "His prognosis is positive and he is grateful for ...
Source: foxnews.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
– The charity founded by , is shutting down following the release of emails showing the depth of her friendship with the late sex offender Sarah's Trust, which focused on improving the lives of women and children, said it will close for the "foreseeable future,'' following the revelations in latest documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice. Ferguson is the ex-wife of the former Prince due to his ...
Source: news4jax.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
The runaway success of the Switch 2 console drove up Nintendo's net profit by more than 50 percent in the nine months to December. The runaway success of the Switch 2 console drove up Nintendo's net profit by more than 50 percent in the nine months to December, the Japanese video game giant said Tuesday. But a global memory chip shortage, created by frenzied demand for artificial intelligence hardware, could push ...
Source: digitaljournal.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
Lay's, Doritos, Cheetos and Tostitos brands will see price cuts PepsiCo said it will cut prices on its core brands by up to nearly 15% as soon as this week to address consumer backlash over recent price hikes. The snacks that will see prices lowered include products under its Lay's, Doritos, Cheetos and Tostitos brands. It comes after the company received an influx of messages from upset consumers over the past ...
Source: foxbusiness.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
Ideas The End of the Nuclear-Arms-Control Era The last significant treaty is about to expire, and Trump isn't putting anything in its place. Illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani / The Atlantic. Sources: Bettmann; Peter Turnley / Corbis / VCG / Getty. Save Something very dangerous is on track to happen this Thursday. In two days, New START , the last significant survivor of the age of nuclear-arms-control agreements ...
Source: theatlantic.com
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2026 -
We report without fear or favor because our work is sustained by members, not influence. Your support helps ensure the truth is told clearly, even when those in power push back. Join HuffPost today. Already a member? WASHINGTON (AP) — A complaint made about Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard months ago relates to an allegation that she withheld access to classified information for political ...
Source: huffpost.com
Monday, Feb 2nd, 2026 -
As the Hennepin County medical examiner on Monday classified Alex Pretti's death as a homicide, US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said members of her department who are on the ground in Minnesota will be issued body-worn cameras—a development that came amid a congressional funding fight and was met with mixed reactions. President Donald Trump and Noem this year have sent thousands of Department of ...
Source: commondreams.org
Monday, Feb 2nd, 2026 -
A Virginia man having an affair with the family's Brazilian au pair was found guilty Monday of murdering his wife and another man that prosecutors say was lured to the house as a fall guy. Brendan Banfield, a former IRS law enforcement officer, told police he came across Joseph Ryan attacking his wife, Christine Banfield, with a knife on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023. He shot Ryan and then Juliana Magalhães, ...
Source: news4jax.com