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GOVERNMENT
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R.I. Commerce secretary resigns to lead new state nonprofit to capitalize on 2026 World Cup
Rhode Island Secretary of Commerce Liz Tanner addressed the media during a press conference in 2023.
Matthew Healey for The Boston Globe
R.I. Commerce Secretary Liz Tanner has resigned from her post. Instead, she will lead Ocean State 2026, a new nonprofit organization created by Governor Dan McKee that will be dedicated to ensuring Rhode Island maximizes the economic opportunities of next summer's World Cup, a press release from the governor's office confirmed. Treasurer James Diossa will serve as chairman of the nonprofit's board. 'This world-class soccer event presents a major opportunity to showcase Rhode Island on the global stage — and we're ready to seize it,' said McKee. 'This new nonprofit will help ensure we're attracting visitors, supporting local businesses, and driving economic activity in the state.' It's unclear who will serve as Commerce's new cabinet-level secretary. A spokeswoman for the governor's office could not be immediately reached for comment. Seven tournament matches will be played at Gillette Stadium from June 13 to July 9, 2026. Throughout the course of the tournament, an estimated one million people are expected to travel through the Providence area with a projected economic impact of more than $330 million. Ocean State 2026 will focus on maximizing the tournament's potential to boost tourism in Rhode Island, support local businesses, enhance workforce development, and showcase the state as a premier global destination, according to a government press release. The nonprofit will lead business sponsorship efforts to support tournament-related activities in Rhode Island. They'll also work with local agencies, like Boston 2026, to ensure a 'a unified and impactful presence before, during, and after the tournament.' Ron O'Hanley, State Street's chief executive, will chair the honorary board of Boston 26. During Tanner's tenure, she oversaw the expansion of broadband infrastructure through over $100 million in federal funding, the launch of programs tailored to the needs of small businesses, and completion of major economic development projects. Her last day as secretary of Commerce will be July 4. — ALEXA GAGOSZ
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BIOTECH
Watertown cancer drug firm iTeos shutting down
iTeos Therapeutics, a cancer-fighting biotech based in Watertown, is winding down operations just weeks after shelving its most advanced drug candidate due to underwhelming clinical data. The 12-year-old biotech had been collaborating with the British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline on the immuno-oncology drug candidate. The companies scrapped that program after mid-stage clinical trials delivered disappointing results. iTeos ended the first quarter of 2025 with more than $624 million in hand and several oncology assets, plus a potential obesity treatment. The publicly traded biotech plans to return as much capital as possible to shareholders, according to a May 28 company news release. The immuno-oncology company had 173 employees at the end of last year, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. iTeos's announcement came the same week that Keros Therapeutics of Lexington said it was ending development of a drug candidate to treat high blood pressure. Keros said it was laying off 45 percent of its workforce, which will leave the company with 85 full-time employees. — JONATHAN SALTZMAN
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TRADE
Trump's tariffs expected to drag down the global economy
A worker sewed garments along a production line at Thanh Cong Textile Garment in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
LINH PHAM/NYT
President Trump's trade war is expected to slow growth in the world's leading economies, including the United States, this year and in the years to come, unless world leaders can resolve their differences over trade. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development slashed its outlook for global output to 2.9 percent this year, from 3.3 percent in 2024, the organization said in its economic report released Tuesday. Economic growth in the United States is expected to be particularly weak, the organization said, rising 1.6 percent this year, a drop from the 2.2 percent projected in March, and 1.5 percent in 2026, down from its previous estimate of 1.6 percent. The US economy grew 2.8 percent in 2024. 'Through to the end of 2024, the global economy showed real resilience,' said Mathias Cormann, the organization's secretary-general. 'But the global economic environment has become significantly more challenging since.' In the first three months of the year, economic growth in the countries monitored by the organization, which is based in Paris, 'dropped abruptly' to 0.1 percent from the last three months of 2024, which is 'the slowest rate of growth since the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic some five years ago,' Cormann said. — NEW YORK TIMES
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ENERGY
Meta becomes the latest big tech company turning to nuclear power for its AI needs
The Clinton Clean Energy Center in Clinton, Ill.
John Dixon/Associated Press
Meta has cut a 20-year deal to secure nuclear power to help meet surging demand for artificial intelligence and other computing needs at Facebook's parent company. The investment with Meta will also expand the output of a Constellation Energy Illinois nuclear plant. The agreement announced Tuesday is just the latest in a string of tech-nuclear partnerships as the use of AI expands. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed. Constellation's Clinton Clean Energy Center was actually slated to close in 2017 after years of financial losses but was saved by legislation in Illinois establishing a zero-emission credit program to support the plant into 2027. The Meta-Constellation deal takes effect in June of 2027, when the state's taxpayer funded zero-emission credit program expires. With the arrival of Meta, Clinton's clean energy output will expand by 30 megawatts, preserve 1,100 local jobs, and bring in $13.5 million in annual tax revenue, according to the companies. — ASSOCIATED PRESS
HIGHER EDUCATION
Education Department says it will not garnish Social Security of student loan borrowers in default
The US Department of Education headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Al Drago/Bloomberg
Borrowers who have defaulted on their federal student loans will no longer be at risk of having their Social Security benefits garnished, an Education Department spokesperson said Tuesday. The government last month restarted collections for the millions of people in default on their loans. An estimated 452,000 people aged 62 and older had student loans in default, according to a January report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The department has not garnished any Social Security benefits since the post-pandemic resumption of collections and has paused 'any future Social Security offsets,' department spokesperson Ellen Keast said. 'The Trump Administration is committed to protecting Social Security recipients who oftentimes rely on a fixed income,' Keast said. Advocates encouraged the Trump administration to go further to provide relief for the roughly 5.3 million borrowers in default. 'Simply pausing this collection tactic is woefully insufficient,' said Persis Yu, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center. 'Any continued effort to restart the government's debt collection machine is cruel, unnecessary, and will further fan the flames of economic chaos for working families across this country.' — ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Newsweek
an hour ago
- Newsweek
Zelensky Ally Says He Hopes JD Vance Not at Trump Meeting
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's upcoming return to the White House will likely go smoother if Vice President JD Vance does not attend, a senior Ukrainian official has said. The Ukrainian leader's now-infamous trip to the White House in late February saw Zelensky berated by President Donald Trump and the vice president in front of the world's cameras. The visit was a dip in already strained relations between Kyiv and the Trump administration, a hideous diplomatic moment Ukrainian officials have been keen to rectify as U.S. efforts to reach a deal to end the fighting grind on. It will be better for the Ukrainian delegation if Vance is not present for Monday's meeting, Oleksandr Merezhko, the chair of Ukraine's parliamentary foreign affairs committee and a member of Zelensky's Servant of the People party, told Newsweek. The February Oval Office meeting saw Vance "provoking" the Ukrainian leader, Merezhko said. Vice President JD Vance, right, speaks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, left, as President Donald Trump listens in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., on February 28, 2025. Vice President JD Vance, right, speaks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, left, as President Donald Trump listens in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., on February 28, 2025. AP Photo/ Mystyslav Chernov, File) In among various barbed exchanges, Vance told Zelensky: "Offer some words of appreciation for the United States of America and the president who's trying to save your country." Zelensky "learned his lesson" from February, and will aim to strike a diplomatic and respectful tone, Merezhko said. The Trump administration is less likely to "bully him again" if the Ukrainian leader is joined by Ukraine's European allies, Merezhko added. A number of Europe's heads of state have confirmed they will make the journey to Washington for the meeting at the White House with Zelensky, including British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron. Finnish President Alexander Stubb may attend, Politico reported on Sunday. The Finnish leader has bonded with Trump over a shared love of golfing while leading a country with a significant land border, and apprehension toward, Russia. Also expected to attend are Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Commission, and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who has pieced together a close relationship with Trump while corralling Europe toward unity. Europe has jostled hard to maintain relevance in U.S.-brokered peace talks over Ukraine, looking on with nervousness at the apparent reluctance of the current administration to punish Russia or leverage significant concessions from Moscow despite its threats to do so. European leaders met virtually with Zelensky and Trump ahead of the Republican's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, reiterating that Ukraine should be involved in negotiations and that international borders should not be changed by force. The issue of which territory Russia and Ukraine will control in a ceasefire agreement has been one of the biggest obstacles to a deal to end the fighting. Russia annexed Crimea, the peninsula to the south of mainland Ukraine, in 2014, and backed separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine that are collectively known as the Donbas, Ukraine's industrial heartland. In fall 2022, after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in the February, Russia declared Donetsk and Luhansk as annexed territory now part of Russia, along with the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. While Russia controls the vast majority of Luhansk, Ukraine retains its grip on about a quarter of Donetsk and of much of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Russia's claim to these regions is not internationally recognized. The Kremlin has positioned its territorial demands as a key sticking point in negotiations. Kyiv has repeatedly said it will not reward Russia's invasion with territory, and to cede these areas would go against the country's constitution. After the Anchorage summit, Trump told European leaders that he backed a plan in which Ukraine would cede territory it still controlled to Russia, The New York Times reported, citing two senior European officials. Reuters reported that Russia had said it would offer slivers of land it currently controls in Ukraine in exchange for Kyiv ceding chunks of land in the east that Russia does not currently control, citing sources briefed on the Kremlin's thinking. Under the proposal, Ukraine would fully withdraw from Donetsk and Luhansk, with the current front lines in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions to the south frozen in place, according to the report. Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said on Sunday that despite the Alaska summit yielding no deal, Ukraine would have "Article 5-like" protections to ward off any future attempt by Russia to attack its neighbor. Article 5 is the provision in NATO's founding treaty that means that an attack on any member country in the alliance is treated as an attack on all. It is not clear how the arrangement Witkoff referred to would work. Ukraine has consistently said it needs security guarantees, and not to be bound by any limits on the size of its military. Kyiv also wants to be on the path to NATO and European Union membership. Russia wants Ukraine to be a neutral state. Expectations are low for the Monday meeting, Merezhko said. "You cannot reconcile them," he said, referring to the Ukrainian and Russian demands. "Now it is really up to President Zelensky to get it done," Trump told Fox News following the Alaska summit. "I would also say the European nations have to get involved a little bit."
New York Post
2 hours ago
- New York Post
The rizz kid: How a campus Communist turned conservative kingmaker put the ‘social' in ‘social movement'
Gen Z calls it 'rizz.' Conservative theorist Frank Meyer radiated it. Rizz is what Donald Trump exudes and Kamala Harris lacks, and this je ne sais quoi quality, at least to all who came before Gen Z brilliantly put a name on it, explains not just one's success on Hinge but whether a political figure can pull a crowd. Advertisement Marble-mouthed mumblers and shoegazers take note: It turns out people follow the very individuals in mass movements they follow around in social situations. Frank Meyer's 3D, pops-off-the-page life illustrates this truth. After the Newark-born Meyer acted as the pied piper of campus Communism in 1930s England, he remarkably became in America during the 1960s, as the title of my new biography puts it, the man who invented conservatism. Advertisement British intelligence conducted a black-bag job on his apartment, placed a mail cover on his correspondence and noted the bars he frequented, the tweed he wore and the frequent female company he kept as they tailed him. Nowhere in the 161 pages of the declassified Meyer files do agents memorialize on paper that the revolutionary they followed — described therein as 'the founder' of the student Communist movement — dated the big boss' daughter. The most Frank Meyer thing Frank Meyer ever did was enter into a relationship with Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald's youngest child as he conspicuously called for the violent overthrow of the British government the man led. Che, Lenin and Mao never pulled off such a brash caper. 'Come here at 7.0 — or if you don't like the idea of Downing Street — even though I am the sole occupant at the moment — fix any other place you like,' Sheila MacDonald wrote Meyer in one of their letters I discovered in an Altoona, Penn., warehouse during research for 'The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer,' out Aug. 19. Predictably, the British government sought to deport Meyer (and, predictably, Miss MacDonald volunteered to intervene). The same rizz that placed the prime minister's daughter in his arms brought a phalanx of famous Brits to his defense. Advertisement Clement Attlee, future prime minister, pleaded his case in Parliament. A petition signed by philosopher Bertrand Russell, 'Howards End' and 'A Passage to India' author E.M. Forster and Labour Party leader (and Angela Lansbury's grandfather) George Lansbury called the deportation 'discrimination' prompted by the cause célèbre's 'left-wing politics.' Students marched about London chanting, 'Free Frank Meyer!' Women desired his romantic attention. Rizz meant men wanted his company, too. In 1930, an unknown Pottstown, Penn., prep-school teacher plaintively petitioned Meyer for more 'scintillating conversations' and 'provocative' letters. He wished to again drink with Meyer and 'to take a Cook's Tour of this particular part of the world with you.' Without Meyer's company, he confessed, he inhabited an 'intellectual desert.' The sycophantic missive came from the typewriter of James A. Michener long before he won a Pulitzer Prize for 'Tales of the South Pacific.' Advertisement By 1949, when Meyer testified against former comrades in the Foley Square trial — the longest, most expensive court case in US history to that point — he had witnessed much evil. He knew that Prince Mirsky, the force who pushed him to join the Communist Party, had disappeared in a Soviet gulag; his protégé, Charles Darwin's great-grandson John Cornford, had died fighting in the Spanish Civil War; his boss on 'peace' activism, Walter Ulbricht (who later built the Berlin Wall), went about making the lives of East Germans hell; and his American idol, longtime party chief Earl Browder, had transformed overnight in Communist rhetoric from a brilliant, courageous leader into a perfidious enemy of the people. Slowly, he embraced a very different outlook. Quickly, and characteristically, the conservative convert became conservative pope. Present at the creation of National Review, the Conservative Party of New York, the Philadelphia Society, the American Conservative Union and Young Americans for Freedom, Meyer helped erect the skeletal structure of the conservative movement. Going to Woodstock meant something very different for 1960s young conservatives. Those making the obligatory pilgrimage to his farmhouse there included Joan Didion, who credited him as the editor who first published her freelance work, Garry Wills, who said he spent more time with this mentor in the late 1950s and early 1960s than anyone outside his family, and Heritage Foundation founder Ed Feulner. His philosophy, fusionism, became the default outlook of the American right from Barry Goldwater well through Ronald Reagan, who cheered that Meyer had 'fashioned a vigorous new synthesis of traditional and libertarian thought — a synthesis that is today recognized by many as modern conservatism.' What made conservatives so easily follow a former Communist? Rizz. Those doubting the power of rizz may wish to apply this test to every presidential election in their lifetimes: Did the winning candidate also win the rizz contest? Advertisement Undertaker-face John Kerry lost to George W. Bush in 2004. John McCain, who looked like he walked off the set of a black-and-white television show, lost to Technicolor Barack Obama in 2008. Monotone Gerald Ford lost to Jimmy Carter with his ear-to-ear grin and mellifluous diction in 1976. And a fist-in-the-air, 'Fight'-shouting Donald Trump — far from the cranky, complaining COVID case of 2020 — triumphed over word-salad chef Kamala Harris in 2024. Frank Meyer understood the power of rizz long before Twitch streamer Kai Cenat popularized the term. They don't call them social movements for nothing. Daniel J. Flynn is the author of 'The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer' (Encounter/ISI Books), an American Spectator senior editor and Hoover Institution visiting fellow.
Entrepreneur
2 hours ago
- Entrepreneur
Stay One Step Ahead of Cyber Threats for Five Years for $35
Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you'll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners. When you run a business, the last thing you want is sensitive company data floating around unprotected. Whether you're working from a coffee shop, hotel lobby, or airport lounge, unsecured networks are a cybercriminal's playground — and a costly breach could set you back far more than a VPN (virtual private network) subscription ever will. With AdGuard VPN's five-year plan, you're getting enterprise-level privacy at a price that makes financial sense. And it's on sale for just $34.97 (MSRP: $359.40). Using its own advanced security protocol, AdGuard delivers faster, safer browsing without the bottlenecks you find in other VPNs, the company says. That means streaming presentations, downloading large files, and accessing client portals securely — all without slowdown. You'll also have access to 70+ global locations, letting you bypass geo-restrictions and test websites, ads, or digital products exactly as your customers see them across different regions. For distributed teams, this ensures everyone can connect securely and consistently, no matter where they work. With a strict zero-logging policy, AdGuard VPN ensures that your browsing history and activity stay private — even from them. And because your subscription supports up to 10 devices simultaneously, you can cover your laptop, phone, tablet, and workstations in one go. Or you can cover 10 of your staff's devices. For $34.97 (MSRP: $359.40), you're not just buying software — you're buying five years of AdGuard peace of mind. In an era where data is a business's most valuable asset, that's a return on investment you can't ignore. AdGuard VPN: 5-Yr Subscription See Deal StackSocial prices subject to change.
