May 16 2025
Walmart Raises Prices; ATC Controller Exposes Strain; AI Delays; Facebook Fuels Scams; Fraught Ukraine Peace Talks
Walmart to Raise Prices as Tariff Costs Bite, Signaling Possible Wider Inflation
"I Don't Want to Be Responsible for Killing 400 People": Controller Exposes System Strain After Close Call
AI Advancement Slowdown? Meta's Flagship Model Delay Signals Costly Hurdles for Tech Giants
Facebook, Instagram Fueling Online Scams; Internal Docs Show High Levels of Fraudulent Advertisers
Fraught Peace Talks Begin: Ukraine, Russia Meet in Istanbul Amid Skepticism and Kremlin Snub
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Walmart to Raise Prices as Tariff Costs Bite, Signaling Possible Wider Inflation
On Thursday, the retail giant Walmart said that the cost of tariffs was forcing the company’s hand, and that it would hike prices on all sorts of goods later this month and into the summer. So far, Trump’s tariffs have had a muted effect on inflation. Walmart’s announcement suggests that a dam is breaking and that a flood of higher prices could soon follow. “If Walmart is doing it, everybody else is probably going to be doing it—if not already, they will be in the future,” said Alan Detmeister, an economist at UBS. He and other economists expect the consumer-price inflation rate to increase to about 3.3% over the next year, from 2.3% in April, should current tariff levels remain stable.
Editors note: predicting inflation is like predicting recessions: not an activity where citizen journal will participate
WSJ
"I Don't Want to Be Responsible for Killing 400 People": Controller Exposes System Strain After Close Call
MALVERN, Pa.—Jonathan Stewart was into his fourth hour overseeing the planes flying near Newark, N.J., when he noticed two aircraft speeding nose-to-nose on his radar scope. A business jet that had departed the Morristown airport was heading toward another small plane that had taken off from nearby Teterboro, a hub for corporate flying. A midair collision was potentially seconds away with planes flying at the same altitude. The veteran air-traffic controller had been scribbling callsigns for the planes and flight information in a notebook, worried that radar and radio communication might fail as they had days earlier. After recognizing the unfolding conflict, he instructed the pilots to turn the planes away from each other, which they did. But Stewart, 45 years old, was badly shaken. Hours after the May 4 incident, he fired off an email to Federal Aviation Administration managers, criticizing their leadership. “I take my job very seriously, as I do the safety of the flying public, and take pride in my performance,” he wrote. For years, the FAA has struggled to fully staff air-traffic facilities and keep critical technology running. Frustrated with the current work situation and his own close call, Stewart took stress-related trauma leave, a benefit available for controllers. “I don’t want to be responsible for killing 400 people,” he said in an interview. Controllers rarely speak to the media publicly, especially without the supervision of public-affairs officials. Stewart said he wanted to set the record straight about controllers who he said had been demonized in news coverage.
WSJ
NYT
AI Advancement Slowdown? Meta's Flagship Model Delay Signals Costly Hurdles for Tech Giants
Meta is delaying the rollout of a flagship AI model, prompting internal concerns about the direction of its multibillion-dollar AI investments, people familiar with the matter said. Meta’s recent challenges mirror stumbles or delays at other top AI companies that are trying to release their next big state-of-the-art models. Some researchers see the pattern as evidence that future advances in AI models could come at a far slower pace than in the past, and at tremendous cost. “Right now, the progress is quite small across all the labs, all the models,” said Ravid Shwartz-Ziv, an assistant professor and faculty fellow at New York University’s Center for Data Science.
WSJ
Facebook, Instagram Fueling Online Scams; Internal Docs Show High Levels of Fraudulent Advertisers
Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is increasingly a cornerstone of the internet fraud economy, according to regulators, banks and internal documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The company accounted for nearly half of all reported scams on Zelle for JPMorgan Chase between the summers of 2023 and 2024, according to a person familiar with the service. The peer-to-peer payment platform is owned by several banking giants, including JPMorgan, the country’s biggest bank, and Wells Fargo. Other banks that offer Zelle have experienced similarly high fraud claims originating on Meta, according to people familiar with the matter. British and Australian regulators have found similar levels of fraud originating on Meta’s platforms. An internal analysis from 2022 described in company documents likewise found that 70% of newly active advertisers on the platform are promoting scams, illicit goods or “low quality” products.
Editors note: I run a citizen journal “Page” for businesses on Facebook, and I have noticed a significant uptick in fake messages in just the last month. I suspect the widespread availability of AI has been a boom from scammers. Fraud is like an iceberg, where the visible tip is much smaller than the invisible, submerged part. For every 1 phishing email you see, 50 get caught in ‘junk’ filters.
WSJ
Fraught Peace Talks Begin: Ukraine, Russia Meet in Istanbul Amid Skepticism and Kremlin Snub
ISTANBUL—Russian and Ukrainian delegations kicked off their first direct peace talks in three years amid a flurry of diplomatic activity marked by limited expectations and frustration in Kyiv and Western capitals with the junior level of the team dispatched by the Kremlin. After more than three years of war, Russia and Ukraine remain wide apart, with President Vladimir Putin of Russia sticking to the original goal of the invasion: a neutered, Moscow-dominated Ukraine. Kyiv, shored up by Western aid, is holding the line on the battlefield and refuses to surrender. The talks, in the Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, came about as the result of President Trump’s pressure, so far mostly applied on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, to find an end to the war. Just as the negotiations started, Russia struck near the Ukrainian city of Dnipro with a salvo of ballistic missiles, according to local officials. Zelensky, who unlike Putin accepted Trump’s call for an unconditional 30-day cease-fire, arrived in Turkey on Thursday with Ukraine’s entire national-security leadership. After keeping everyone, including Trump, guessing about whether he would attend, Putin sent instead a junior team led by former culture minister Vladimir Medinsky.
WSJ
May 16, 1916: Britain and France Conclude Sykes-Picot Agreement
The 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, a secret pact between Britain and France during World War I, fundamentally carved up the Ottoman Empire's Middle Eastern territories with arbitrary boundaries that disregarded historical, ethnic, and religious realities on the ground. By drawing straight lines across maps in European offices, colonial powers created artificial nations like Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan while fragmenting Kurdish populations across multiple countries and establishing contradictory promises regarding Palestinian lands. Many scholars and regional leaders criticize this agreement as the root of persistent Middle Eastern conflicts, arguing that these imposed borders trapped incompatible communities within the same nations, created inherently unstable states lacking national cohesion, and planted seeds for territorial disputes that continue to fuel violence today. Critics point to the region's ongoing sectarian tensions, civil wars, and boundary conflicts as direct consequences of European powers privileging their strategic and economic interests over local self-determination, effectively establishing a colonial legacy that the Middle East continues to struggle with more than a century later.
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Sources
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