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A US federal data blackout deepened Thursday as a government shutdown halted the release of third quarter GDP figures, forcing policymakers, financial institutions and business owners to continue flying blind.The world’s biggest economy has already delayed reports on employment, trade, retail sales and others, only recalling some furloughed staff to produce key inflation figures needed for the government to calculate Social Security payments.On Thursday, the shutdown entered its 30th day, with Republicans and Democrats still at an impasse.Each assigns blame to the other side over the stoppage, with no quick solution in sight and food aid for millions now at stake.While there were no official gross domestic product (GDP) numbers published on Thursday, economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal expected GDP growth of 2.8 percent in the July to September period.This would be a cooling from second quarter economic growth of 3.8 percent.The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow indicator — a running estimate of real GDP growth based on available data — pegs the figure at 3.9 percent.But the ongoing information blackout means that companies and officials will have to wait to find out.Experts warn that businesses could lower hiring and investment.”This is the time of year where most organizations are finalizing their budgets for 2026,” said Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union.”So, almost any company is sitting there thinking: Do we think 2026 is going to be an uptick? Or a slowdown, or a recession?” she told AFP.She added that industries are also trying to gauge if the Fed will keep cutting interest rates, a decision that depends on inflation and the jobs market, which has been weakening.The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the shutdown could cost the economy up to $14 billion.Matthew Martin of Oxford Economics added that business would likely “reduce their overall hiring to be on the safe side,” until they see data pointing to rising demand or a stabilization in the economy.If the government shutdown lasts through mid-November, as predictions markets expect, most delayed data releases will still be unlikely to come out until December, Goldman Sachs said in a recent note.Such delays could distort October and November numbers.Long warned that October’s data could also be lost if the shutdown persists for too long — as it might not be collected.

US President Donald Trump said Thursday he had ordered the Pentagon to start nuclear weapons testing “on an equal basis” to China and Russia — an announcement made just minutes before he held a high-stakes summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.The move came after Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Moscow had successfully tested a nuclear-capable, nuclear-powered underwater drone, in defiance of Washington’s warnings.”Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” Trump wrote in a social media post.Following that announcement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday that the weapon tests announced by Putin did not constitute a direct test of an atomic weapon.Both countries observe a de facto moratorium on testing nuclear warheads, though Russia regularly runs military drills involving systems that are capable of carrying such weapons.The United States has been a signatory since 1996 to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which bans all atomic test explosions, whether for military or civilian purposes.It was not immediately clear whether Trump was referring to testing nuclear warheads, which the United States last did in 1992, or testing weapons systems capable of carrying atomic warheads.Trump also claimed that the United States has more nuclear weapons than any other country, praising his own efforts to do “a complete update and renovation of existing weapons.””Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within five years,” he said.- Thousands of warheads -The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in its latest annual report that Russia possesses 5,489 nuclear warheads, compared to 5,177 for the United States and 600 for China. In total, SIPRI estimates that the nine nuclear-armed countries — Russia, the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea — possess more than 12,200 warheads.Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that it had been “many years” since the United States had conducted nuclear tests.”We don’t do testing… we’ve halted it years, many years ago,” he said, adding that it was “appropriate” to start again because others are testing.”I’d like to see denuclearization… denuclearization would be a tremendous thing,” he said.He claimed “it’s something we are actually talking to Russia about, and China would be added to that if we do something.”Trump kept the location and dates for testing vague during the news conference, but said earlier it would “begin immediately.”- China defends nuclear ban -The Republican president was in South Korea to meet with Xi, with the leaders of the world’s top two economies coming face-to-face for the first time in Trump’s second term.Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun later urged the United States to “earnestly abide” by a global nuclear testing ban “and take concrete actions to safeguard the global nuclear disarmament.”The United States conducted 1,054 nuclear tests between July 16, 1945, when the first test was conducted in New Mexico, and 1992, as well as two nuclear attacks on Japan during World War II.It is the only country to have used nuclear weapons in combat.The last US nuclear test explosion was in September 1992, with a 20-kiloton underground detonation at the Nevada Nuclear Security Site.Then-president George H.W. Bush imposed a moratorium on further tests in October 1992 that has been continued by successive administrations.Nuclear testing was replaced by non-nuclear and subcritical experiments using advanced computer simulations.- Russia’s ‘Poseidon’ drone -Putin announced on Wednesday the successful testing of a nuclear-capable, nuclear-powered underwater drone, the second weapons test in days after that of the Burevestnik cruise missile.In televised remarks broadcast from a military hospital treating Russian soldiers wounded in Ukraine, Putin said there was “no way to intercept” the torpedo drone dubbed “Poseidon.””Regarding the tests of Poseidon and Burevestnik, we hope that the information was conveyed correctly to President Trump,” Kremlin spokesman Peskov told journalists, including AFP, during a daily briefing on Thursday.”This cannot in any way be interpreted as a nuclear test.”He implied that Russia would also test nuclear warheads if Trump ordered a live test of an atomic weapon.”If someone departs from the moratorium, Russia will act accordingly,” Peskov said.

A beaming US President Donald Trump hailed his “great success” in talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the South Korean city of Busan on Thursday.From a deal to reduce tariffs slapped on China for its role in the fentanyl trade to planned cooperation in ending the war in Ukraine, here’s what Trump says he achieved in talks with Xi: – Fentanyl -The fentanyl trade has long been a sore point in relations between China and the United States: Washington accuses Beijing of turning a blind eye to the illegal trade in the drug, a charge it denies.Trump hit China with a 20 percent levy on Chinese imports over complaints about its exports of chemicals used to make fentanyl.However, he said after the talks in Busan the tariffs would be reduced to 10 percent — bringing overall US tariffs on Chinese goods to 47 percent.Trump said Xi “agreed that he was going to work very hard to stop the flow” of the powerful opioid, which has killed thousands of Americans.”I believe he’s going to work very hard to stop the death that’s coming in,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One.- Hill of beans -Beijing retaliated against Trump’s fentanyl tariffs with levies against US agricultural products, including soybeans.More than half of US soybean exports went to China last year, but Beijing halted all orders as the trade dispute deepened.US farmers have been badly hit by the tariff war and are a key source of domestic political support for Trump.Trump said China had now agreed to purchase “tremendous” amounts of soybeans, as well as other farm products.”That was a very nice gesture,” he said.- Rare earths -A strategic field dominated by China that is essential for manufacturing in defence, automobiles and consumer electronics, rare earths were expected to occupy a central role in the Busan talks.Beijing imposed sweeping export controls on the materials and related technology this month. Trump swiftly announced retaliatory tariffs of 100 percent on all Chinese goods, which were originally due to come into effect on Saturday.But the US leader insisted on Thursday that “that whole situation, that roadblock is gone now”.”There’s no roadblock at all on rare earths — that will hopefully disappear from our vocabulary,” he said, without giving details.- Ukraine – The United States and China have also reportedly agreed to cooperate more on seeking an end to the war in Ukraine.China says it is a neutral party in the conflict, but Kyiv and Western governments have long accused Beijing of providing political and economic support to Moscow.Trump told reporters the subject had come up “very strongly” during his talks with Xi.”He’s going to help us, and we’re going to work together on Ukraine,” Trump said.- Chips -Beijing has ramped up its chip industry to beat Washington’s export restrictions on the critical component used to power artificial intelligence systems.US chip giant Nvidia has been caught in the middle of that geopolitical tussle. Nvidia’s chips are currently not sold in China due to a combination of Beijing government bans, US national security concerns and ongoing trade tensions.CEO Jensen Huang has urged the United States to allow the sale of US-made AI chips in China in order to ensure Silicon Valley companies remain a global powerhouse in providing artificial intelligence.”We did discuss chips,” Trump said after meeting Xi, adding that Huang would speak to Beijing about the dispute.”We’re sort of the arbitrator or the referee,” Trump said.Huang is currently in South Korea for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO summit in Gyeongju, which Xi is also expected to attend.

US policymakers, financial institutions and business owners have been flying blind for almost a month as a government shutdown has stopped the release of crucial federal economic data ranging from the size of the labor force to the country’s GDP.The void is set to deepen by Thursday as Washington holds off publishing gross domestic product (GDP) numbers measuring the growth of the world’s biggest economy in the July to September period.The United States has already delayed reports on employment, trade, retail sales and others, only recalling some furloughed staff to produce key inflation figures needed for the government to calculate Social Security payments.Congressional Republicans and Democrats remain at an impasse, each assigning blame to the other side over the shutdown with no quick end in sight and food aid for millions now at stake.Analysts warn the growing information blackout could, in turn, cause businesses to lower hiring and investment.”There’s a huge demand right now for government data,” said Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. “Every industry is trying to figure out if the Federal Reserve is going to keep cutting interest rates.”The central bank’s decisions hinge upon the economy’s health, particularly inflation and the weakening jobs market.”This is the time of year where most organizations are finalizing their budgets for 2026,” Long told AFP.”So, almost any company is sitting there thinking: Do we think 2026 is going to be an uptick? Or a slowdown, or a recession?”The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the shutdown could cost the economy up to $14 billion.Economist Matthew Martin of Oxford Economics expects firms to proceed cautiously, with President Donald Trump’s tariffs already sending uncertainty surging this year.”Businesses would therefore reduce their overall hiring to be on the safe side of things, until they see data that really points towards increased demand, or at least stabilization in the economy,” he told AFP.Similarly, those in the financial markets need data to make investments and decide their moves in equities, he said.- ‘Tainted data’ -Should the shutdown last through mid-November, as prediction markets expect, most delayed data releases will likely not come out until December, Goldman Sachs said in a note this week.”The risk would grow that delays could distort not just the October but the November data too,” the report added.Long said that October’s data could even be lost if the shutdown drags on for too long, “because the data was not collected.”Government workers could ask people to recount economic conditions once the shutdown ends, but this proves tricky if the delay is too long, she said.The risk is no data or “tainted data” if memories are seen as less reliable over time, she added.While economists, policymakers and business leaders have been relying on private sector data, analysts stress that these cannot replace numbers produced by the US government, which are viewed as the gold standard.”We have a remarkable amount of uncertainty about just literally what’s happening with labor supply, like how many people are in the United States and want jobs,” said Brookings Institution senior fellow Wendy Edelberg.She added that there is significant disagreement about how many people have left the country since the start of 2025.Wells Fargo senior economist Sarah House said despite strong GDP growth recently, there are many “signs of strain underneath the surface,” alongside signals that “not every component or group in the economy is doing equally well.”She cautioned that the shutdown is unhelpful for the economy: “If you’re not sure when your next paycheck is coming as a government worker, you’re not going to be going out to eat for dinner.” “You’re maybe pushing off a trip, or just not buying little discretionary things.”

New York’s mayors are an eclectic bunch: from uniters to heroes-turned-villains and those accused of corruption.Here is what to know about five of the most high-profile mayors of The Big Apple as the city prepares to pick its 111th leader on November 4:- Fiorello La Guardia (1934-1945) -La Guardia lends his name to New York’s first major airport, inaugurated in 1939, a recognition of his role as the builder of modern New York.He remains the preferred mayor of present-day candidates Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo.Born in New York to Italian parents and raised between the United States and Italy, La Guardia was one of many city leaders of immigrant descent.A progressive Republican, he was elected by opposing Tammany Hall, the Democratic hub that had controlled the city for a century. Nicknamed “the Little Flower,” he led the city during the Great Depression, collaborating with president Franklin Roosevelt.Under La Guardia’s administration, New York developed public housing, a modernized subway system, new parks and two airports, and reformed its welfare system.- The Orator: Ed Koch (1978-1989) -Koch famously described himself as “the sort of person who will never get ulcers. Why? Because I say exactly what I think.”Born in New York in 1924 to Polish Jewish parents, he studied law before entering politics. The city faced high crime and a financial crisis when he took office.The Democrat, who described himself as “liberal with sanity,” imposed austerity while renovating thousands of abandoned homes. He famously pounded the sidewalks, asking passersby “How’m I doin’?” His tenure ended marred by corruption scandals involving close associates, the closure of a hospital serving Black residents, and criticism of his AIDS policy.- Diversity champion: David Dinkins (1990-1993) -New York’s first African American mayor championed diversity, calling it a “gorgeous mosaic.” Born in neighboring New Jersey, Dinkins served in the military before studying mathematics and law.His marriage to the daughter of a New York State Assembly member propelled him into politics.He was unable to secure re-election after battling rising crime and racial tensions.This culminated in 1991’s Brooklyn riots after a rabbi’s motorcade hit two Black children, killing one. Dinkins strengthened police and supported community mediation and racial integration, laying the groundwork for a sustained drop in crime and more inclusive policies. – ‘America’s mayor’: Rudy Giuliani (1994-2001) -The first Republican mayor in 20 years in true-blue New York, Giuliani cut spending and cracked down on crime. He pushed controversial “broken windows theory,” insisting on zero tolerance for low-level lawbreaking. Critics accused him of ignoring police brutality, noting crime was declining nationwide anyway.Giuliani’s management of the September 11, 2001 attacks aftermath earned him the nickname “America’s Mayor” — and Time magazine’s Person of the Year.After an unsuccessful 2008 Republican presidential run, he joined Donald Trump’s campaign to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory. Ex-attorney Giuliani has since been repeatedly sued for defamation and disbarred in New York.- The Progressive: Bill de Blasio (2014-2021) -This Democratic outsider courted voters emphasizing the city’s economic divisions after 12 years under independent Michael Bloomberg’s leadership.His progressive wins included universal pre-kindergarten and a reduction in police stop-and-frisk actions.But de Blasio’s policies aimed at promoting affordable housing failed to curb rising rents, and homelessness.His attempt to introduce a “millionaire’s tax” to fund his social programs was blocked by state legislators. He struggled to engage police unions following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2014 and 2020, and is remembered for a stuttering response to the Covid-19 pandemic. He abandoned his presidential ambitions in 2020 amid a lack of support.

The US military on Wednesday struck another boat in the eastern Pacific it claimed was trafficking drugs, killing four people, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said, bringing the death toll from Washington’s controversial anti-narcotics campaign to at least 62.The strike occurred in international waters, Hegseth announced on X, and a video accompanying his post showed a boat floating stationary in the water before a large explosion and subsequent fire.Like previous videos released by the US government, areas on the boat are obfuscated, rendering it impossible to verify how many people were on board.”This vessel, like all the others, was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics,” Hegseth said.Experts say the attacks, which began in early September, amount to extrajudicial killings even if they target known traffickers, and Washington has yet to make public any evidence that its targets were smuggling narcotics or posed a threat to the United States.Wednesday’s deadly attack comes two days after multiple strikes on four boats killed 14 people in the eastern Pacific and left one survivor.The United States asked Mexico to attempt to rescue the survivor, but Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Wednesday that search efforts had failed.Earlier Wednesday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said his country had intercepted three planes allegedly used for drug trafficking, as tensions mount over the US boat strikes and its military deployment in the region.”The day before yesterday…a drug-trafficking plane entered through the Caribbean. Our aviation detected it in a second,” Maduro said at an official event. “Today, two drug-trafficking aircraft entered from the north. And in accordance with our law, we have an interception law…bam, boom, bang!”It was not immediately clear if this meant the planes were shot down.Maduro said the action was taken “to make them respect Venezuela…what is that called? Exercising sovereignty.”Caracas has sought to showcase anti-drug efforts in the face of a massive US military deployment within striking distance of the country.The United States has deployed seven US Navy warships as well as F-35 stealth warplanes, and ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group to the region, bringing a massive increase in firepower.Washington calls its deployment an anti-drug operation, but Caracas fears it is a guise for military action to oust Maduro.US President Donald Trump’s administration says Maduro is a drug lord, an accusation he denies, and has issued a $50 million reward for information leading to his capture.Maduro insists there is no drug cultivation in Venezuela, which he says is used as a trafficking route for Colombian cocaine against its will.

Google parent Alphabet reported its first-ever $100 billion quarterly revenue on Wednesday, powered by strong growth across its core search business and rapidly expanding cloud division that was buoyed by artificial intelligence.The tech giant’s revenues jumped 16 percent year-on-year to $102.3 billion in the third quarter, beating analyst expectations and marking a milestone for the company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998.”Alphabet had a terrific quarter, with double-digit growth across every major part of our business,” said CEO Sundar Pichai in a statement.Net income surged 33 percent to $35 billion, with the company pointing to its ability to capitalize on the artificial intelligence boom that is reshaping the tech landscape.Google’s core search and advertising business remained the primary revenue driver, generating $56.6 billion, up from $49.4 billion a year earlier.YouTube advertising revenues also grew strongly to $10.3 billion from $8.9 billion.But it was Google Cloud that stole the spotlight, with revenues soaring 34 percent to $15.2 billion. The cloud division, which competes with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, has become a key growth engine for Alphabet.The company’s ambitious approach to offering AI “is delivering strong momentum and we’re shipping at speed,” Pichai said, highlighting the global rollout of AI features in Google Search and the company’s Gemini AI models.The company said its Gemini App now boasts over 650 million monthly active users and that a growing amount of users were using the company’s AI Mode for search queries.However, the results were partially overshadowed by a $3.5 billion fine imposed by the European Commission in September for competition law violations in its ad tech business.Excluding this penalty, operating income would have increased 22 percent instead of the reported nine percent, the company said.The strong performance comes as Alphabet ramps up capital spending to meet surging demand for AI infrastructure.The company now expects 2025 capital expenditures of between $91-$93 billion, reflecting massive investments in data centers and computing power to fulfill its AI ambitions.It said its spending on capex would grow even more next year, though without providing more details for now.Microsoft and Meta, which also posted results on Wednesday, showed similar massive expenditures on AI infrastructure, which consume more energy than conventional data centers, strain electric power grids and use local water resources for cooling.The company also reported having over 300 million paid subscriptions across services like Google One and YouTube Premium.Despite the robust growth, Alphabet’s experimental “Other Bets” division, which includes autonomous vehicle unit Waymo, posted a loss of $1.4 billion on revenues of just $344 million.Google’s shares have surged by nearly 40 percent in the thrid quarter, with investors also buoyed by the company’s success in persuading a federal judge to deny a US government request that it sell off its Chrome browser as a solution in an antitrust trial.The judge was swayed by arguments that Google’s world-dominating search engine — the heart of Google’s business — faces stiff competition from ChatGPT and other AI chatbots like Perplexity.Still, Google’s search revenue was up nearly 15 percent from the same quarter last year.

To someday allow scientists to stay underwater conducting research for days on end, the UK-based company DEEP has designed Vanguard, a “subsea human habitat.”The company unveiled its prototype Wednesday at a hangar in Miami, Florida, hoping that oceanographers and other researchers can use it to stay underwater in the ocean for at least a week, instead of only a few hours like most expeditions.”There are zones in oceans around the world that are unexplored at those depths, and making them available and accessible by divers will open up a whole new realm of science,” Norman Smith, DEEP’s Chief Technology Officer and the lead engineer behind Vanguard, told AFP.For now, Vanguard is situated only 20 meters (65 feet) underwater, a depth accessible by scuba diving, but DEEP is already working on prototypes that can get down to 200 meters (650 feet). The vessel consists of three sections: a living chamber, a diving center and a base. The first part, measuring 12 meters (40 feet) long by 3.7 meters (12 feet) wide, is where scientists would eat, sleep and work, designed to resist ocean water pressure to keep up to four occupants safe. The “diving center” would connect to the underwater base, which would be anchored to the seabed to protect the overall habitat from waves and storms. Vanguard also will include a floating structure on the surface of the water to transport compressed air, power the vessel, and allow for communication with the outside world.When DEEP deploys Vanguard for the first time in the coming weeks off the coast of Florida, the company hopes scientists will be able to use it to carry out long-term underwater conservation projects, such as coral restoration.

In a speech in Riyadh in May, President Donald Trump denounced generations of US interventionism, saying the Middle East was only made worse by Americans who fly in “giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs.”Those views apparently do not extend to Latin America, where he instead has been blatantly meddling in ways harkening back to an earlier era in US history.Trump has intervened directly to weaken the democratically elected leftist leaders of Colombia and Brazil and to bolster the right-wing president of Argentina.He has also put the United States on a war footing in the Caribbean, raising speculation he will forcefully depose Venezuela’s leftist firebrand Nicolas Maduro.Trump, who has put a top priority at home on mass deportation of mostly Latin American undocumented migrants and alleged gang members, has argued that the United States is in an armed conflict with narcotraffickers, likening them to “terrorists.” He has launched repeated deadly strikes on small boats, with murky public information available, and confirmed he authorized CIA operations in Venezuela.Democratic Senator Mark Kelly said in a recent ABC News interview: “You don’t move a battle group all the way from where it was to the Caribbean unless you’re planning on either to intimidate the country — which is rather intimidating — or you’re going to start conducting combat operations in Venezuela.”- Dividing friends and foes -The United States has treated Latin America as its sphere of influence under the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, when then president James Monroe said the hemisphere was closed to European powers.Washington has intervened aggressively over the past two centuries, sometimes with disastrous results — as in the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion aimed at ousting Cuban communist revolutionary Fidel Castro.Trump has zeroed in from the start of his second term on a revitalization of the Monroe Doctrine, threatening to seize back the Panama Canal due to Chinese influence in the critical waterway.If not military force, Trump has turned to economic tools. At the start of his administration in January he imposed sweeping tariffs on Colombia to punish Gustavo Petro, the US ally’s first left-wing president, for defying Trump on migration.More recently the Treasury Department imposed sanctions personally on Petro, whom Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American and sworn critic of the region’s leftists, branded a “lunatic.”Trump has also targeted a top judge in Brazil for prosecuting former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who was convicted over a coup attempt with echoes of Trump supporters’ riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.By contrast, Trump promised a $20 billion bailout to Argentina to boost President Javier Milei and has moved to reward Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, who offered to help Trump’s deportation drive by taking in prisoners to his own maximum-security prison.- ‘MAGA’ Latin America -“I think definitely the goal of the Trump administration is to shape Latin American politics in the form of a MAGA agenda,” said Renata Segura, who heads the Latin America and Caribbean program at the International Crisis Group, which promotes conflict resolution.But Trump’s MAGA, or Make America Great Again, movement is also deeply skeptical of jeopardizing US lives and resources in foreign wars.Rubio has been seen as the architect of the hawkish turn on Venezuela, hoping a downfall of Maduro could set off a domino effect that could even bring down Cuba’s 66-year-old communist government.With the military deployment, the United States is sending a clear message not only to Venezuela, Segura said.”They’re sending a message to the entire region that they will act unilaterally when they decide that that is appropriate,” she said.Trump, however, already tried during his 2017-2021 term to oust Maduro, including by building a coalition of major Latin American and European powers.Maduro remained entrenched, enjoying his own support base as well as backing by Cuba, China and Russia.”If there is this goal of using militarization pressure to produce some internal break that leads to Maduro’s departure, my concern is that what was tried in Trump One,” said Roxanna Vigil, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.”It didn’t work,” she said.