February 17 2025

1. Trump Officials Meet Russians on Ukraine
2. Wall Street Deals Worsen National Fire Truck Shortage
3. Most Americans Think Foreign Aid Lost to Corruption
4. Daily Cross-Border Workers Sustain US Border Economies
5. Chinese Cities Adopt DeepSeek AI for Government Services
6. US Anthem Booed Before USA Defeats Canada 3-1 in Heated Hockey Match
February 17, 1996: Chess champion Garry Kasparov defeats IBM’s Deep Blue

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FLASH…First Test of Trump’s Power to Fire Officials Reaches Supreme Court…
court’s conservative majority may be receptive to the argument that presidents have unlimited power to remove leaders of independent agencies….

1. Trump Officials Meet Russians on Ukraine

Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Saudi Arabia ahead of talks between top U.S. officials and Russian envoys on how to end the war in Ukraine, discussions that signal the Trump administration is eager to push for an agreement. Rubio, along with national security adviser Mike Waltz and Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, would meet with a Russian delegation in Riyadh on Tuesday, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said Monday. The talks would be “devoted primarily to restoring the entire complex of Russian-American relations,” the Kremlin said. The arrangements for the U.S.-Russia meeting were firmed up following a Friday call between Rubio and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, which Moscow said was at the initiative of the Americans. The State Department said that the two diplomats had discussed “the opportunity to potentially work together on a number of other bilateral issues.”  Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Lavrov and Yuri Ushakov, a foreign-policy adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, were heading to Riyadh for talks involving, among other things, preparations for negotiations on the Ukrainian settlement, Russian state news agency TASS said.

Article Source: WSJ

2. Wall Street Deals Worsen National Fire Truck Shortage

Desperate to gain control of flames that were raging through Pacific Palisades last month, the Los Angeles Fire Department issued an urgent call for any available personnel to report for possible deployment. But there was a problem: Dozens of the rigs that would have carried extra crews that day were out of service. The city maintenance yard was filled with aging fire engines and ladder trucks, many of which were beyond their expected service life. That breakdown, records show, was in part a result of the city’s failure to hire enough mechanics to keep the rigs in service. But there was also a deeper problem: For years, the fire truck industry had been ratcheting up prices on new rigs and failing to meet delivery dates of those that were ordered. Some departments have waited years for replacement vehicles while hunting the internet for parts to keep their older rigs going. Those problems have compounded in recent years as Wall Street executives led an aggressive consolidation of the industry in a plan to boost profits from fire engine sales. One company, backed by a private equity firm, cut its own manufacturing lines as part of a streamlining strategy and then saw a backlog of fire engine orders soar into billions of dollars. The industry disruption has had effects well beyond Los Angeles — straining big cities like Atlanta and Seattle, and smaller ones, such as Watertown, N.Y., and Camden, N.J. Fire departments have expressed growing frustration with delayed deliveries and rising costs that are leaving them with dilapidated fleets that are more likely to break down, including some that have done just that during emergencies.

Article Source: NYT

3. Most Americans Think Foreign Aid Lost to Corruption

A majority of American voters believe most US foreign aid never reaches people in need, a survey has found, underlining the difficulties of defending an agency targeted by Elon Musk’s cost-cutting task force. A poll by Public First for the Financial Times found that almost 60 per cent of respondents agreed that funds set aside for humanitarian causes were “wasted on corruption or administration fees”. Only 12 per cent disagreed with the proposition. The findings come as the US Agency for International Development, a $40bn agency established decades ago with missions in more than 100 countries, continues to be dismantled by Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).

Article Source: FT

4. Daily Cross-Border Workers Sustain US Border Economies

The U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada are peppered with communities that have closely braided economies, and cross-border commuters are common. Studies of hot spots have found heavy traffic. KPMG, for example, estimated last year that more than 20,000 people travel daily to jobs on either side of the Michigan and Ontario, Canada, border. Some are nurses heading south for high-demand U.S. jobs. Nearly 12,000 people commute from Mexico into El Paso each day, according to data from a survey last year by the city and El Colegio de la Frontera Norte. The “borderplex” region there has been intertwined for decades, a legacy of Mexico’s assembly-for-export “maquiladora” or “twin plants” industry, which since the 1960s allowed U.S. companies to export components duty-free to Mexican plants to be assembled into products and shipped back to the U.S.   

Editors note: my article on the border

Article Source: WSJ

5. Chinese Cities Adopt DeepSeek AI for Government Services

City governments across China have launched online services featuring DeepSeek and local officials have started studying the potential uses of the AI start-up, which has thrown down the challenge to US rivals such as OpenAI. Guangzhou has started using DeepSeek’s R1 and V3 AI models in its public web portals to deliver services more efficiently, according to a report published by the city government’s social media account on Sunday. It said the city would use the technology to explain policies to the public, handle hotlines, take requests, improve internal workflows and manage city services.

Article Source: South China Morning Post

6. US Anthem Booed Before USA Defeats Canada 3-1 in Heated Hockey Match

A. Team USA heard “The Star-Spangled Banner” booed inside Bell Centre before its opening game at the 4 Nations Face-Off, raising tensions ahead of a matchup against the host Canadians on Saturday night. “I didn’t like it,” American forward Matthew Tkachuk said after Thursday’s 6-1 win over Finland. “And that’s all I’ve got.” The NHL knew this was a possibility after the American anthem was booed here before a Devils-Canadiens game last week, but hoped that the climate had been turned down when U.S. President Donald Trump issued a 30-day reprieve on his plans to institute a 25 percent tariff on Canadian goods. However, Trump has also mused about the possibility of making Canada the 51st state and earlier this week ordered a 25 percent tariff on all imports of steel and aluminum into the U.S. from all countries.  

B. Team USA, riding the surge of three first-period fights in the opening nine seconds, claimed a 3-1 win over Team Canada on Saturday at the Bell Centre.

Article Source: NYT

Think my article on the potential of robots was far fetched? Watch this video

February 17, 1996: Chess champion Garry Kasparov defeats IBM’s Deep Blue

In the final game of a six-game match, world chess champion Garry Kasparov triumphs over Deep Blue, IBM’s chess-playing computer, and wins the match, 4-2. However, Deep Blue goes on to defeat Kasparov in a heavily publicized rematch the following year.

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Sources

2. https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/trump-administration-officials-to-meet-with-russian-counterparts-on-ukraine-war-ced03b97?mod=hp_lead_pos8

3. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/17/us/fire-engines-shortage-private-equity.html

4. https://www.ft.com/content/c92c76d1-02cc-45fb-99a0-9935ae04046a

5. https://www.wsj.com/us-news/us-mexico-border-workers-f9b1e7c6?mod=hp_lead_pos10

6. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3299012/chinese-cities-launch-deepseek-driven-services-local-cadres-jump-ai-bandwagon?share=TPXy97VWO%2BNWwxiaRSJBctcVShWI0W9i4TraC3%2B0wuK57nMBZNXqVMLMbnJr%2BD9COgPsChtwJMuwWPqAbB9cXzGITJ5sWtKqJ0RdayIJM7Y%3D&utm_campaign=social_share

7. A https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6136046/2025/02/14/team-usa-anthem-4-nations-montreal/
B https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6139397/2025/02/15/usa-canada-4-nations-face-off-score/