The Petersburg Post
Top News Stories for Friday, January 30th 2026
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans are proposing sweeping changes to the nation's voting laws, a long-shot priority for President Donald Trump that would impose stricter requirements before Americans vote in the midterm elections in the fall. The package expected to be released Thursday reflects some of the party's most sought-after election changes , including requirements for photo IDs before people can ...
Source: military.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Traditional customer service roles fragment into specialized positions like automation supervisors, AI trainers, and escalation specialists as organizations recognize human value lies in coaching AI systems rather than handling routine inquiries. Data infrastructure quality, not technology sophistication, determines AI success, with implementations requiring unified customer records, clean knowledge bases, and ...
Source: cmswire.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
The Fed at their January meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee decided not to continue easing interest rates. This holds the short-term federal funds rate at a top rate of 3.75% which was set in December. This is the first time since September that the Fed has not eased rates. Their FOMC statement read. "Available indicators suggest that economic activity has been expanding at a solid pace. Job gains have ...
Source: bdmag.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 -
Employers that plan to join Bank of America Corp. , Intel Corp. , and other major companies in making Trump Account contributions must weigh potential benefits with continued regulatory uncertainty that can carry legal risk. Companies including JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced this week they would match the $1,000 contribution from the federal government toward the accounts for eligible employees, joining big firms ...
Source: news.bloomberglaw.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Turkey hosts urgent mediation as Trump's threats mount and Tehran weighs painful compromises to avoid conflict Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, will travel to Ankara for talks aimed at preventing a US attack, as Turkish diplomats seek to convince Tehran it must offer concessions over its nuclear programme if it is to avert a potentially devastating conflict. Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan , ...
Source: theguardian.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 -
ATLANTA (AP) — In an extraordinary scene this week, FBI agents pulled box trucks up to a warehouse south of Atlanta and drove away with hundreds of boxes containing ballots and other documents related to the 2020 election in Georgia's most populous county. Fulton County, which votes overwhelmingly Democratic, has been a target of President Donald Trump and his allies since he narrowly lost the presidential ...
Source: apnews.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
An escalating conflict between the federal judiciary and the Trump administration led a frustrated judge in Minnesota to release a list Wednesday of nearly 100 court orders he says Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) violated over the last month. "ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence," Patrick J. Schiltz, Chief Judge of ...
Source: reason.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 -
You are not logged into your account. You have a registered email address and password on pressherald.com, but we are unable to locate a paid subscription attached to these credentials. Please Thank you for your support of local journalism! Around 200 people gather for an anti-ICE rally outside of Sen. Susan Collins' Portland office calling on her to vote no on the DHS funding bill that includes more money for ICE ...
Source: pressherald.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
cancer in multiple organs just before he was sentenced to 20 years behind bars. Sean Grayson, 31, for shooting Sonya Massey to death inside her Springfield, , home in July 2024. She was unarmed and had called 911 over a suspected intruder. During his sentencing hearing on Thursday, Sangamon County Judge Ryan M. Cadagin sentenced Grayson to 20 years in prison, the maximum sentence for killing Massey. Just ...
Source: dailymail.co.uk
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 -
There have been two confirmed cases of Nipah virus in a hospital in West Bengal, India. Close to 200 people were also exposed to the infection. This has sparked concern across Asia, as the virus is extremely contagious. Several Asian countries have now instituted Covid-era airport screenings to monitor the spread of infection for which there's currently no vaccine or cure. This zoonotic infection originates from ...
Source: theweek.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Meta appeared to gain approval from investors to keep putting money into AI as its shares jumped 8% post-earnings. Microsoft plunged as the company's Azure segment showed a slowdown in growth and higher spending on artificial intelligence. The AI narrative also spilled over into the broader tech sector, with ServiceNow falling on broader concerns that the technology is eroding software's business model. In this ...
Source: cnbc.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
BEIJING (AP) — The leaders of Britain and China called Thursday for a "strategic partnership" to deepen ties between their nations at a time of growing global turbulence as they sought to thaw relations after years of chill. Neither Prime Minister Keir Starmer nor President Xi Jinping publicly mentioned Donald Trump , but the U.S. president's challenge to the post-Cold War order was clearly on their minds. "I ...
Source: apnews.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Jan. 29 (UPI) -- A judge has barred federal immigration officers from arresting and detaining legally present refugees in Minnesota, handing the Trump administration a legal defeat in its aggressive immigration crackdown. U.S. District Judge John Tunheim, in Minneapolis on Wednesday, issued a temporary restraining order that bars the arrest and detention of any Minnesota resident with refugee status as litigation ...
Source: upi.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Last chance to save on Digiday Publishing Summit passes is February 9 The U.K'.s Competition Markets Authority (CMA) has proposed new rules to give publishers more control over how Google uses their content in AI features like its AI Overviews. The upshot: publishers should be able to opt out of having their material included, and see clearer attribution when their content appears. Google has responded by ...
Source: digiday.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Infections had turned his lungs to soup and had to be cleared before transplant. Humans can't live without lungs. And yet for 48 hours, in a surgical suite at Northwestern University, a 33-year-old man lived with an empty cavity in his chest where his lungs used to be. He was kept alive by a custom-engineered artificial device that represented a desperate last-ditch effort by his doctors. The custom hardware solved ...
Source: arstechnica.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Apple reported fiscal first-quarter earnings on Thursday that surpassed expectations, with revenue soaring 16% on an annual basis. The company reported $42.1 billion in net income, or $2.84 per share, versus $36.33 billion, or $2.40 per share, in the year-ago period. Apple saw particularly strong results in China, including Taiwan and Hong Kong. Sales in ...
Source: cnbc.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 -
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration's high-profile deployment of federal troops to six U.S. cities has cost taxpayers roughly $496 million through the end of December, and continued deployment could cost over $1 billion for the rest of the year, according to new data from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office . President Donald Trump has justified sending National Guard troops into U.S. cities as part ...
Source: military.com
Thursday, Jan 29th, 2026 -
Erbil, Iraq — President Trump has threatened to cut off all U.S. support for Iraq if the country reelects former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for a third term. Al-Maliki, a member of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority, was forced to resign in 2014 after two consecutive terms in office amid pressure from both inside and outside the country as it grappled with the rise of the Sunni terror group ISIS . ...
Source: cbsnews.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 -
The Auto Browse agent is available to AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers, but there are some limits. Google began stuffing Gemini into its dominant Chrome browser several months ago, and today the AI is expanding its capabilities considerably. Google says the chatbot will be easier to access and connect to more Google services, but the biggest change is the addition of Google's autonomous browsing agent, which it has ...
Source: arstechnica.com
Wednesday, Jan 28th, 2026 -
The early bird may not only catch the proverbial worm but also have a healthier heart, new research suggests. People who naturally stay up late, self-described night owls , are likelier to have poor heart health than people with more traditional sleep-wake schedules, according to a study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association . The findings were particularly strong among women. ...
Source: nbcnews.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 -
Just hours before its after-the-bell Q4 earnings call Wednesday (Jan. 28), it was common to see a headline calling for Meta to defend and maybe even trim its artificial intelligence (AI) spending. "Meta to Report Q4 Earnings Amid AI Spending Concerns" was typical. But there was at least one person who didn't share those concerns and apparently didn't even get the post. "I think my answers to a lot of your questions ...
Source: pymnts.com