Wendy's changed the spicy chicken sandwich. The new one isn't bad, but the old one occupied a very specific spot in my memory that will be missed.

America’s gross national debt topped $40 trillion for the first time on Wednesday, an ominous milestone for an economy that sits on a shaky fiscal foundation after decades of borrowing to pay for the rising costs of the military, social safety net programs and President Trump’s tax cuts.

This year alone, the United States is on track to borrow more than $2 trillion to help pay for its obligations, including spending on the war in Iran and the sweeping tax cuts that Republicans enacted in 2025. Soaring interest payments to investors who have purchased America’s debt now make up about half of that red ink, pushing the United States into a deeper financial hole.

I don't have a picture, but just picture a 45 degree line

Many Federal Reserve officials think the central bank will have to lift its key short-term interest rate in the coming months if inflation doesn’t subside, minutes of the Fed’s meeting last month showed.

The minutes of the July 28-29 meeting, released Wednesday, don’t provide specifics on how many of the 19 officials supported higher rates. Only 12 of the 19 policymakers vote on the outcome. Officials voted 9-3 at the meeting to keep their key rate unchanged at about 3.6%.

Inflation has since showed some signs of cooling, though gas prices have rebounded this month on renewed hostilities in the Middle East. Wall Street investors now expect the Fed to remain on hold at its next meeting in September and potentially lift rates in December, though that outlook could change.

At last month’s meeting, Fed officials were heavily focused on the threat of stubbornly elevated inflation. Fed officials worried that the Iran war, tariffs, and heavy investment in AI infrastructure were all boosting prices of a range of goods and services.

“Participants judged that their inflation outlooks were highly uncertain and that inflation risks were skewed to the upside,” the minutes said. “Many participants assessed that (higher rates) would likely be necessary if inflation did not decline.”

Some Fed officials pointed out that “even after excluding prices of items most directly affected by tariffs and energy prices, underlying inflation appeared to be elevated,” the minutes said.

Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, so-called “core” prices have cooled, with annual core inflation falling to 2.5% in July, the government said last week, according to the consumer price index. Yet the Fed pays more attention to a separate gauge, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, which is running hotter than the CPI. Core PCE prices are expected to have risen 3.3% in July from a year ago, a much higher reading than CPI. Those figures will be reported Aug. 26.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/54117599

A new €2 handling fee will be introduced on parcels ordered from outside the European Union from November.

This is on top of the €3 charge that was introduced in July.

A NEW HANDLING fee to be imposed from November on parcels ordered from outside the European Union will likely apply to each item within a package, a customs compliance expert has warned.

The new fee, which is designed to cover costs associated with customs processing, will likely be €2, but the exact details haven’t been released yet.

The fee will be on top of the €3 customs charge which has applied to every unique item in orders worth €150 or less coming from outside the EU since 1 July, a charge imposed in a bid to improve EU security and level the playing field for businesses.

Customs compliance expert Brian Murphy told The Journal that it’s “very likely” the new handling fee will also be placed on individual items in the parcel.

“That fee is going to be on top of the customs €3 fee. So, it could double the charges again, potentially, and that’s very real and coming in very soon,” he said.

If the handling fee applies per unique item in a package, the cost of each item would increase by around €5 in total after the €3 customs fee is also applied.

Murphy said the €3 fee was just one of a number of changes coming over the next 18 months as part of an overall EU customs reform plan.

“It’s the largest shake-up of EU customs since 1968, and e-commerce parcels are a particular target of this plan,” he said.

“The future of e-commerce imports into the European Union is changing dramatically. It’s not just tariffs or duty anymore.”

Murphy said changes around classification of the product, packaging rules, deforestation rules and forced labour checks will all converge over the next 18 months to make imports of e-commerce goods “more complex and more costly”.

He previously said that despite the positive intention of the €3 fee, it disproportionately impacts online shoppers in Ireland, largely due to our e-commerce reliance on the UK.

Sinn Féin spokesperson on finance, Pearse Doherty, said news of the new handling fee will “come as another nasty shock to shoppers in Ireland”.

“These fees put all the burden and responsibility on ordinary people and member state’s postal services, while letting online giants like Shein and Temu off the hook,” Doherty said in a statement.

“Instead of holding these corporations to account, the EU is dumping all the responsibility on ordinary people by applying badly designed taxes on individual items.”

"A dangerous message is sent [by Biassotti's shirt]: 'You do not belong here. Your safety is not our priority.'"

"Transgender and nonbinary youth already face staggering rates of anxiety, depression, and bullying. They look to school leadership for protection, stability, and basic dignity."

"For a leader to bring targeted hostility into the very room where decisions about their education and well-being are made is both irresponsible and cruel."

A federal judge in Washington on Wednesday blocked the Trump administration’s recent changes to the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, which hit groups around the country that teach classes on healthy relationships, abstinence and contraception.

The Trump administration, he wrote “is perfectly entitled to formulate its own views about how to stem teen pregnancy — or even whether it is worth preventing at all — and to pursue policy initiatives consistent with its viewpoint. But it is not at liberty, under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), to impose conditions on grant recipients that Congress did not intend or that are unreasonable or unexplained.”

The mission to save NASA’s sinking Swift Observatory was called off Wednesday, dooming the telescope to a fiery reentry later this year.

NASA and Katalyst Space Technologies announced the news more than a month after the startup’s Link spacecraft rocketed away to the telescope’s rescue.

Katalyst said Link will not attempt to capture Swift and boost it to a higher orbit because of problems with controlling the spacecraft. NASA said this means the telescope will plunge through the atmosphere after more than 20 years of tracking some of the biggest explosions in the universe like gamma ray bursts and exploding stars. Its demise is not expected before October.

NASA paid $30 million to Katalyst in an attempt to raise the telescope to a safer, longer-lasting orbit. Intense solar activity caused it to lose altitude faster than expected. The rescue spacecraft went into an uncontrollable spin a few weeks after its liftoff in early July. While flight controllers managed to slow Link’s tumble, issues continued to plague its pointing and positioning in orbit.

“This is not the outcome we were working toward, but it does not change why this mission was worth attempting,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement.

As a consolation prize, Katalyst will continue to operate Link in proximity with the telescope to demonstrate capabilities for future rescue operations.

Katalyst CEO Ghonhee Lee said it was an ambitious mission on an aggressive timeline that was thrown together in under a year .

In an act of civil disobedience, US Air Force Major Jason Watson is arrested by police on the US Capitol steps, after calling for the impeachment and removal of President Donald Trump, on July 1.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/19/politics/us-airman-arrested-at-capitol-trump-impeachment-detained

Adoptions are on hold for thousands of dogs and cats in Texas, potentially putting the animals at risk of being euthanized, because of efforts to stop the spread of the New World screwworm, an insect that has crossed the border from Mexico into the United States for the first time in 60 years.

The flesh-eating parasite threatens the nation’s $113 billion beef industry, prompting federal officials to close the border to cattle movements. Because the screwworm also can infect pets, most states have restricted the movement of animals from infested areas of Texas, leading to crowded conditions in state shelters that rely on adoptions to other regions of the country.

“It’s thrown a wrench into things, for small rescues as well as the bigger shelters,” said Mia Bendixsen, executive director of the Texas Humane Legislation Network, which promotes animal welfare laws.

The screwworm can lay eggs that hatch into flesh-eating larvae in the wounds or mucous of any mammal, and of the dozens of infections in southern Texas and southeastern New Mexico, several have been in dogs. Forty-four states have restricted the movements of pets from infested areas, creating a hardship for shelters from Texas that typically send thousands of animals to other states each year.

In Corpus Christi, the Gulf Coast Humane Society couldn’t get rescued dogs into New York state for weeks, causing the shelter’s animal population to climb from around 325 to nearly 450.

The shelter, which sends about 500 dogs a year outside Texas, created more space in outdoor exercise areas until New York again allowed dogs from Texas — if a veterinarian first certified that each one wasn’t infected with the screwworm.

She added that if her shelter doesn’t have space to take animals from municipal shelters, “then they have to euthanize more animals.”

https://sh.itjust.works/post/65359372