May 3, 2026

06 Market

OPEC loses UAE

pgnewser April 30, 2026 0

The United Arab Emirates is officially separating from the OPEC alliance. They declared, “During our time in the organisation, we made significant contributions and even greater sacrifices for the benefit of all. However, the time has come to focus our efforts on what our national interest dictates and our commitment to our investors, customers, partners and global energy markets. This is what we will focus on going forward.”

United Arab Emirates quits OPEC alliance– www.washingtonexaminer.com
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The United Arab Emirates on Tuesday said it is exiting OPEC and the broader OPEC+ as of May 1, marking a major loss for the oil producing bloc as global energy markets remain volatile in light of the Iran war.

The UAE said it has participated in the organization for the greater global benefit, but it is leaving the group to focus on internal interests.

FISA Passes House, Biden Vehicle Kill Switch Survives

pgnewser April 30, 2026 0

Representative Chip Roy (R-TX) is still trying to kill what is being called the Biden Vehicle Kill Switch. This is a requirement by the government that all car manufacturers create a vehicle kill switch that car owners cannot deactivate. So far, he has failed. This latest effort has also failed, with the Johnson-led House passing FISA renewal ahead of Thursday’s deadline.

Roy proposed an amendment to the FISA renewal act that effectively kills the Biden kill switch. Roy said, “Republicans should not be continuing a blatantly invasive Biden-era policy that enables round-the-clock monitoring of Americans in their own cars. That’s why I introduced an amendment to FISA to eliminate the ‘kill switch’ and stop this Big Brother technology from being built into new vehicles.”

Roy Pushes Amendment to End Biden Surveillance Mandate– www.dailysignal.com
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The vehicle kill switch may be getting another chance to be killed in Congress this week as a member of the House Rules Committee wants to repeal legislation that directs automakers to install surveillance technology on all new vehicles starting in 2027.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a committee member and influential congressman on the conservative House Freedom Caucus, says the Biden-era mandate poses “a direct threat to our Fourth Amendment rights.”

“Republicans should not be continuing a blatantly invasive Biden-era policy that enables round-the-clock monitoring of Americans in their own cars,” Roy told The Daily Signal while the possibility of the amendment was still being discussed by the Rules Committee.

“That’s why I introduced an amendment to FISA to eliminate the ‘kill switch’ and stop this Big Brother technology from being built into new vehicles.”

This is Roy’s second attempt at killing the kill switch this year.

The need for an amendment already has large support from House conservatives, including Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.; Scott Perry, R-Pa.; and Keith Self, R-Texas.

“The government should never have the ability to remotely kill your car or anything else you own,” Self told The Daily Signal. “When a group of us conservatives in the House tried to repeal this Joe Biden-era mandate set to take effect next year, 57 Republicans teamed up with 211 Democrats to stop us. That’s unacceptable.”

House passes FISA extension ahead of Thursday’s deadline – WGHN

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A powerful surveillance authority that the U.S. government uses to spy on foreigners cleared the House on Wednesday, resolving one stalemate that threatened to derail its renewal before it expires this week.

It now faces hurdles in the Senate.

The controversial spy tool, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is set to lapse Thursday. Congress approved a 10-day extension ahead of the original April 20 deadline.

After House GOP opposition forced days of delay, the lower chamber advanced the measure earlier Wednesday in a procedural vote that was held open for about two hours as leaders worked to convince holdouts to flip their votes.

The House passed the measure — which is formatted as an amendment to an unrelated bill — in a 235 to 191 vote later in the day.

Section 702, which was first authorized in 2008, allows the government to collect the communications of noncitizens located outside the U.S. without a warrant, though it can also sweep up the data of Americans who are in contact with the targeted foreigners. The FBI is able to search Americans’ data gathered through the program without a warrant.

National security officials have long argued that the law is vital for disrupting terrorist plots, foreign espionage, international drug trafficking and cyber intrusions.

China’s Mantus Cut off from U.S. Purchase

pgnewser April 29, 2026 1

China has made a decisive move in the emerging AI race and war with the U.S., halting the purchase of a Chinese-created AI-agent company called Manus. The purchaser was the U.S.’s Meta. China did not offer an explanation, though it reflect AI nationalization trends both in China and in general.

China blocks Meta’s $2 billion Manus AI acquisition after regulatory scrutiny – Firstpost
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China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has blocked Meta’s $2 billion acquisition of Manus, an agentic startup founded by Chinese engineers. The move by the NDRC is one of the most significant interventions in a cross-border deal, one that extends well beyond US-China tensions and into the broader AI industry.

The commission issued no explanation and ordered both parties to unwind the deal completely. Reports suggest the decision could be a serious blow to Meta and its fast-moving AI agents strategy, since almost 100 Manus employees had already moved into Meta’s Singapore offices and taken on executive roles. The unwinding could therefore cause major disruption between the two companies.

AI creates 1K Jobs at Salesforce

pgnewser April 29, 2026 1

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced online plans to hire 1000 new college graduates to drive the “exponential” potential of AI. He said in his X post, “… they said AI would kill entry-level jobs.  Meanwhile these grads & interns are building it.”

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Marc Benioff has announced plans to hire 1,000 graduates and interns at Salesforce, positioning the move as a counterpoint to fears that artificial intelligence will erode entry-level job opportunities.

In a post on X, Benioff said the new hires would contribute to building AI-driven products within the company, including initiatives such as Agentforce and Headless360. He encouraged graduates to apply through the company’s recruitment channels, emphasising that young talent is actively participating in developing the very technologies expected to disrupt traditional roles.

Republicans must not help Democrats gut workplace democracy– www.washingtonexaminer.com

pgnewser April 29, 2026 0

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On April 20, Democrats joined with union leaders to announce a so-called “discharge petition” on the Faster Labor Contracts Act. With strong Democratic backing for the petition, and if they can convince a handful of Republicans to join them, the House will be forced to vote on a bill that Democrats are calling “pro-worker.” Yet, Republican representatives should know: The Faster Labor Contracts Act is a direct attack on workers’ rights.

Don’t take it from me. Take it from a union official who was invited by Democrats to testify at a congressional hearing last year. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) asked the shop steward, who’s with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, about the Faster Labor Contracts Act. The bill is so named because it imposes an expedited deadline for contract negotiations between businesses and unions.

Schools are struggling to afford costs of free school lunches, and MAHA guidelines may make it worse– fortune.com

pgnewser April 29, 2026 0

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As more than two-thirds of U.S. public schools say they already can’t sustain free meals for their students, one economist is sounding the alarms and says the Trump administration’s updated dietary guidelines may make these financial troubles even worse.

For the 2023-2024 school year, the government provided 4.8 billion lunches to the nearly 29.4 million students belonging to the National School Lunch Program, at a cost of $17.7 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture data. Part of this sum takes the form of cash reimbursements to schools serving free or reduced-cost food to students, with free lunch costing roughly $4.70 per student per meal.

Many schools, however, say the assistance they receive to feed students the subsidized meals are not enough. A recent survey of more than 1,170 school nutrition directors from the trade group the School Nutrition Association (SNA) found this year, 69.6% reported insufficient reimbursement rates to cover the cost of school lunches, an increase from 67.4% the previous year. More than half of the directors said there is “serious concern” about the financial sustainability of their school nutrition programs over the next three years, up from 46% from the 2024-2025 school year.

Croatia, Bosnia sign pipeline deal to reduce dependency on Russia– abcnews.com

pgnewser April 29, 2026 0

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DUBROVNIK, Croatia — DUBROVNIK, Croatia (AP) — Croatia and Bosnia signed an agreement Tuesday to build a gas pipeline designed to reduce energy dependency on Russia in the volatile Balkans region.

The Southern Interconnection pipeline will link Bosnia with Croatia’s gas network and the liquefied natural gas terminal on the Adriatic Sea island of Krk. Bosnia has designated a U.S.-based company, AAFS Infrastructure and Energy, as the project’s investor and developer.

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and the chair of Bosnia’s Council of Ministers, Borjana Kristo, signed the deal in the presence of U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright on the sidelines of a summit of the countries of the Baltic, Black and Adriatic regions.

Plenkovic on social media said the gas pipeline would help diversify supplies: “We are strengthening energy security and independence … which is especially important in these challenging global circumstances.”

Mistral AI launches Workflows, a Temporal-powered orchestration engine already running millions of daily executions– venturebeat.com

pgnewser April 28, 2026 0

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Mistral AI, the Paris-based artificial intelligence company valued at €11.7 billion ($13.8 billion), today released Workflows in public preview — a production-grade orchestration layer designed to move enterprise AI systems out of proofs of concept and into the business processes that generate revenue.

The product, which launches as part of Mistral’s Studio platform, is the company’s clearest articulation yet of a thesis that is quietly reshaping the enterprise AI market: that the bottleneck for organizations adopting AI is no longer the model itself, but the infrastructure required to run it reliably at scale.

“What we’re seeing today is that organizations are struggling to go beyond isolated proofs of concept,” Elisa Salamanca, who leads go-to-market for Mistral’s enterprise products, told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview ahead of the launch. “The gap is operational. Workflows is the infrastructure to run AI systems reliably across business-critical processes.”

The release arrives at a pivotal moment for both Mistral and the broader AI industry. The dedicated agentic AI market has been valued at approximately $10.9 billion in 2026 and is projected to reach $199 billion by 2034. Yet despite that staggering growth trajectory, industry research points to a stark reality: over 40% of agentic AI projects will be aborted by 2027 due to high costs, unclear value, and complexity. Mistral is betting that Workflows can help its enterprise customers avoid becoming one of those statistics.

Into the Omniverse: Manufacturing’s Simulation-First Era Has Arrived– blogs.nvidia.com

pgnewser April 28, 2026 0

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Manufacturing’s traditional design-build-test cycle rested on a single assumption: Real-world testing was the only reliable test environment. 

That assumption is now shifting. 

Today, high-fidelity simulation produces synthetic training data accurate enough for production-grade AI. This is enabling perception systems, reasoning models and agentic workflows to excel in live factory environments.

OpenUSD has emerged as the connective standard that makes this practical, and the manufacturers building on it are already experiencing measurable results. 

America Scores Big With $1B Shakedown Of Offshore Wind Projects– crooksandliars.com

pgnewser April 28, 2026 0

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The Trump administration is making two more payouts for energy companies to walk away from U.S. offshore wind projects. Which makes an incredible amount of sense, if you and your cabinet members own stocks in oil companies!

Bluepoint Wind and Golden State Wind have agreed to end their offshore wind leases in exchange for reimbursements totaling nearly $900 million. Both companies have decided not to pursue any new offshore wind projects in the United States, the Interior Department said Monday, as if that was something to brag about! Like a little boy who poops his pants and proudly wiped it on the wall.

Bluepoint Wind is an offshore wind project in the early stages of development off the coasts of New Jersey and New York — while under constant attack by right-wing radio for killing whales, birds, and probably small children, while Golden State Wind is a floating offshore wind project proposed off California’s central coast.

It’s just like the deal Interior made with Total Energies in March. They get a refund of its leases, and will invest the money in patriotic and pro-American fossil fuel projects instead.

Top 10 Physical AI Models Powering Real-World Robots in 2026– www.marktechpost.com

pgnewser April 28, 2026 0

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The gap between language model capabilities and robotic deployment has been narrowing considerably over the past 18 months. A new class of foundation models — purpose-built not for text generation but for physical action — is now running on real hardware across factories, warehouses, and research labs. These systems span deployed robot policies, private-preview VLAs, open-weight research models, and world models used to scale robot training data. Some are being evaluated or deployed with industrial partners; others are primarily research or developer-facing systems. Here is a breakdown of the ten that matter most in 2026.