Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Ryland Barton.
SpaceX has launched the latest version of its massive Starship rocket from South Texas a day after it canceled a launch because of mechanical issues. This Starship flight is uncrewed, but a later version could return astronauts to the surface of the moon. The launch comes as the company prepares an initial public stock offering.
“SpaceX says Starship is key to launching more satellites for its starlink wireless internet”
network and it plans to use the rocket to lift cargo and eventually as many as 100 people at a time into orbit as part of its goal of colonizing Mars. Popular prediction markets are under congressional investigation, the House Oversight Committee is probing calcium and poly-market after multiple reports of military and political insider trading cases and PR's Luke Garrett reports.
Prediction markets host billions of dollars worth of bets on sports politics and in some cases war. In April, the DOJ charged a U.S. soldier for making $400,000 using classified information to bet on the capture of Nicolas Maduro. House Oversight Committee Chair, James Comer, tells CNBC this case and other reports of insider trading prompted the probe.
"We wanted not only launch investigations to see how wide spread this has been thus far, but also the proven case that we've got to pass some type of legislation." Kalshi and Polymarket have two weeks to turn over their documents on insider trading. The commodity futures trading commission regulates prediction markets and does prohibit insider trading.
“But there's growing concern that current laws haven't kept up with these new financial exchanges.”
Luke Garrett and PR News. "The Washington." A bipartisan group of senators is pushing back on delays by the Department of Defense
and sending roughly $600 million in security aid to Ukraine and other allies in Eastern
Europe. They sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hague Seth that calls for the funding to be dispersed. Friction has grown between Congress and the Trump administration in recent weeks. As lawmakers push for updates on what's happened with $400 million in Ukraine, that was allocated by Congress last year, and $200 million more for defense programs in Estonia,
Latvia, and Lithuania. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is playing up President Trump's endorsement heading into the final days of his U.S. Senate primary runoff against incumbent John Kornin. The races, the latest campaign, were Trump is encouraging voters to ask to politician who's displeased him and elected a challenger that's more aligned with him as in PR's
Tamar Keith explains. It took him an incredibly long time to endorse in the primary runoff between Senator John Kornin and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
When he finally did, Trump put his weight behind the challenger Paxton, who has an opposition
research file thicker than a phone book, but who made it clear that he would be a loyal soldier for Trump. In PR's Tamar Keith reporting, the U.S. stock market closed out its 8th straight week of winning finishes. This is the S&P 500 climb more than a quarter percent, it's NPR news.
Waymo has suspended driverless car services in Atlanta in Texas after one of its vehicles was stranded by flooding during heavy rains, and a likely effect much of the U.S. over the holiday weekend, a waymo vehicle got stuck during a downpour in Atlanta that flooded streets and even part of a downtown highway earlier this week. Google is changing what it means to Google.
The company is integrating AI more deeply into its core internet search function, but as NPR's John Ruiz reports, critics say it could mean fewer choices for users and less web traffic for businesses. At its annual developer conference this week, Google said it's making its iconic search box more dynamic so it can expand with longer searches.
Users can also put pictures or documents into it for new kinds of searches, and it's folding more AI into its search. The company has put AI over views on some searches for about a year, and it sees the integration of the two as the way forward. Critics warn that AI answers could give consumers less choice as AI prioritizes suggestions
over web links. That could also undermine the internet economy and businesses that are reliant on clicks, including online shops, web advertisers, and even news organizations. John Ruiz and PR News Carlo Petrini, the founder of the slow food movement, has died at 76 years old in Italy's
Piedmont region, slow food is known for promoting sustainable food and local cuisine. The movement began in 1986, opposing fast food and Italy, and quickly spread to over 160 countries. It also founded Terra-Modry and the University of Gastronomic Sciences, which has trained thousands in food culture.
This is NPR News This week on the MPR Politics Podcast, an extraordinary week for presidential power.
The Trump DOJ created a billion dollar fund for victims of quote "government weaponization"
“and in key primaries, the president successfully ousted incumbents that he views as disloyal.”
We're covering it all, and what it means from November's midterms, on the MPR Politics
Podcast.
Listen on the MPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
