INTERNACIONAL
US-backed foreign broadcaster selling pricy news gear for pennies on the dollar to ‘spite’ taxpayers
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A nonprofit news organization that is funded entirely by the U.S. government began selling off a large amount of its equipment on a public auction site – with many items being sold for pennies on the dollar.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) receives about $60 million a year from American taxpayers to produce news in Asia. The organization said it was suspending operations due to a lapse in funding during the government shutdown.
But while its website went dark, Fox News discovered that RFA had quietly begun selling off major portions of its expensive broadcast gear, including HD cameras, teleprompters, lenses and even office refrigerators.
Listings on a public auction site, Rasmus Auctions, show RFA-branded broadcast gear is being offered at fire sale prices.
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A teleprompter was listed for 40 cents at Rasmus Auctions. (Rasmus Auctions)
Some high-definition cameras are for sale for less than a dollar, teleprompters for ninety cents, professional lenses for under a dollar and a refrigerator listed for just twenty cents.
In total, more than a thousand pieces of equipment were offered for sale, which has sparked outrage.
California Congressman Darrell Issa, who had been working to restore RFA’s funding, called the online auction a betrayal to American taxpayers.
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Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., attends the third day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 17, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
«I’ve never seen such belligerence by an organization that gets a hundred percent of its money from the U.S. government,» Issa said. «Lenses you’d pay thousands of dollars for are being sold for pennies. It’s clear they’re liquidating assets out of spite.»
When reached for comment, a spokesperson for Radio Free Asia blamed the Trump administration’s earlier budget cuts.
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RFA is selling HD cameras for 10 cents. (Rasmus Auctions)
They also pointed at the shutdown for forcing the organization to make difficult financial choices.
«The Administration’s unlawful termination and disruption of RFA’s timely funding, followed by an extended government shutdown, has forced the company to drastically reduce operational costs to set up for long-term success,» the statement read.
«Shedding equipment we can no longer use, while retaining key personnel and assets, responsibly positions RFA to continue editorial operations that hold the Chinese Communist Party and other authoritarian governments to account,» RFA said.
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A refrigerator was being auctioned for 10 cents at Rasmus Auctions. (Rasmus Auctions)
«Our plan going forward is to build back once Congress and the Administration resolve our funding issues,» the statement concluded.
However, Kari Lake, Deputy Executive at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees RFA, quickly disputed those claims.
«Everything they said was not true,» Lake shot back.
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Kari Lake vowed to get to the bottom of what is going on at RFA.
«We are funding them. We’ve given them every single penny appropriated to them. Eighty cents for an HD camera? That’s a slap in the face to taxpayers,» Lake said.
In a letter to RFA sent Thursday, Lake wrote: «The insanity ends now. Be prepared to open your doors next week for our team of auditors to find out what on earth is going on at RFA, as permitted under the grant agreement and applicable regulations.»
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In further comments to Fox News, RFA said it hopes to restart its news operations if Congress restores its funding, and they have enough equipment to continue to operate if Congress decides to fund them moving forward.
taxes,media,donald trump,politics,congress,government shutdown
INTERNACIONAL
Google Gemini declares only GOP senators violate hate speech policy, zero Democrats, author claims
Google admits role in Biden censorship push
Rep. John Cornyn, R-Texas, joins ‘The Faulkner Focus’ to react after Google acknowledged pressure from the Biden administration to censor accounts over political views, and weighs in on anti-ICE rhetoric following a violent attack in Dallas.
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EXCLUSIVE: Google’s AI chatbot Gemini flagged several Republicans — but no Democrats — when asked to identify senators who have made statements that violate its hate speech policies, author Wynton Hall told Fox News Digital. It’s just one example of what the author believes is a deeply ingrained bias against conservatives found in artificial intelligence tools.
Hall used the «deep research» function on Google’s Gemini Pro. Fox News Digital reviewed a screen recording of Hall’s prompt and findings. Google did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
One of the Republicans flagged by Gemini in Hall’s research, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, of Tennessee, was listed for characterizing «transgender identity as a harmful cultural ‘influence’ and has used ‘woke’ as a derogatory slur against protected groups.» Another, Arkansas’ Sen. Tom Cotton, was cited for cosponsoring legislation «to exclude transgender students from sports.»
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Hall argues that artificial intelligence is biased in his new book «Code Red: The Left, The Right, China and the Race to Control AI.» (Wei Leng Tay/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
The finding stood out against a backdrop of inflammatory rhetoric from some Democrats in recent years.
In 2023, Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., warned that then-candidate Donald Trump was «destructive to our democracy» and needed to be «eliminated.» However, he quickly apologized for his comments, claiming that it was a «poor choice of words.»
Last year, Texas Democratic House candidate Rep. Jolanda Jones made a throat-slashing gesture while rejecting former first lady Michelle Obama’s famous mantra, «when they go low, we go high,» on CNN’s «Outfront.»
«If you hit me in my face, I’m not going to punch you back in your face. I’m going to go across your neck,» Jones said while making a slashing motion across her neck. «We can go back-and-forth, fighting each other’s faces. You’ve got to hit hard enough where they won’t come back,» she added.
But for Hall, Gemini’s seemingly partisan answer underscored the central argument of his new book, «Code Red: The Left, The Right, China and the Race to Control AI.» In it, he argues that AI systems marketed as neutral are increasingly shaped by the ideological assumptions of the people and institutions who create them, which are far from neutral.
His book starts out with a clear example.
Less than 10 weeks before the 2024 election, a series of viral videos appeared to expose a strange double standard in American homes. When users asked Amazon’s Alexa why they should vote for Kamala Harris, the device delivered a polished endorsement. When asked why they should vote for Donald Trump, Alexa declined, citing a policy of neutrality.
«I cannot provide content that promotes a specific political party or a specific candidate,» Alexa said.
Hall says the concern extends beyond a single Gemini output.
«AI’s Silicon Valley architects lean left politically, and their lopsided political donations to Democrats underscore their ideological aims,» Hall told Fox News Digital.
To Hall, episodes like this show how AI can shape political perceptions while maintaining the appearance of objectivity. «Through algorithm throttling and shadow bans, Big Tech centralized control over which voices soar and sink across social networks. Now AI has put Big Tech’s consolidating control on steroids,» he writes.
WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?
Hall alleges Google Gemini flagged Republican senators’ rhetoric as hate speech while identifying no Democratic violations, raising questions about AI bias. (Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
He argues that this imbalance reflects the politics of the people building the systems. The billionaires driving the AI revolution, he says, invest their money and political energy where their values lie. As PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel once put it, «Silicon Valley is a one-party state.»
The money appears to bear that out. According to Hall, 85% of political donations from employees at Apple, Meta, Amazon and Google go to Democrats.
After Trump’s 2024 victory, major tech companies made the customary $1 million inauguration donations. But Hall argues those gestures did little to hide where Silicon Valley’s loyalties had long been. Aside from Elon Musk, he says, most of Big Tech’s leading figures remained firmly on the left.
Hall points to Democratic fundraising in 2024 as evidence of Silicon Valley’s political influence, citing major support from figures including Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, Reid Hoffman and Laurene Powell Jobs.
But Hall argues the bigger issue is not campaign money.
It is the growing influence of AI systems that many people assume are neutral and objective. He warns that users often trust those answers too much, even when they may be biased.
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To Hall, this bias is reinforced by the relationship between tech companies and legacy media. He argues AI systems are trained on enormous amounts of content from outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic and Reuters, while conservative outlets are largely excluded.
The result, he says, is a closed loop: AI absorbs the assumptions of legacy media and repackages them as objective truth. Hall argues conservatives must respond by demanding transparency in training data and ending taxpayer-funded contracts for vendors whose systems show political bias.
«Whoever wins the AI fairness battle,» Hall concludes, «will shape the minds and political attitudes of future generations. The time to act is now.»
technology,artificial intelligence,politics
INTERNACIONAL
Starmer le responde a Trump por Ormuz: «Gran Bretaña no se verá envuelta en una guerra a gran escala con Irán»
Las amenazas de Trump
«No lo he decidido»
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El precio del petróleo
Ayudas para calefacción
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President Donald Trump sent his clearest warning yet to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on Sunday: Stand with the U.S. for defense of the Strait of Hormuz or face a «very bad» future.
«It’s only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there,» Trump told The Financial Times in an interview Sunday. «If there’s no response, or if it’s a negative response, I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO.»
Trump echoed those remarks in a press gaggle aboard Air Force One on Sunday night, returning to Washington, D.C., from a weekend at Mar-a-Lago, saying it would «be nice to have other countries police that with us, and we’ll help – we’ll work militarily.»
«Remember, like as an example of many cases that NATO countries, we’re always there for NATO,» Trump told reporters, pointing to «helping them with Ukraine» even though «between us, it doesn’t affect us.»
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President Donald Trump issued some stern warnings for NATO to come to the world’s defense or face a «very bad» future. (SAUL LOEB / AFP)
«But we’ve helped them,» he added, repeating his comments to the United Nations General Assembly last fall, questioning whether NATO will «always be there for us.»
Trump is looking for NATO allies’ assistance in securing the oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz for the rest of the world. Trump administration officials have been repeating throughout the choking of the strait that the U.S. under Trump is a net exporter of oil and gets only a fraction of its oil from the Middle East – unlike the rest of the world, including NATO allies.
«It’d be interesting to see what country wouldn’t help us with a very small endeavor, which is just keeping the Strait open, and that, by comparison is a small [ask],» Trump added to reporters on Air Force One. «It’s small because Iran has very little firepower.»
A time-lapse video shows marine traffic moving through the Strait of Hormuz. (Kpler/Marine Traffic)
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Trump remained optimistic that NATO allies will ultimately get on board.
«We are talking to other countries about working with us about the policing of the strait, and I think we’re getting a good response,» Trump told reporters on AF1. «If we do, that’s great – and if we don’t, that’s great.»
The Iranian regime is using sea mines, which it has stockpiled in the thousands, to make traversing the Strait of Hormuz difficult and deadly. (Win McNamee/Getty Images; Eranicle/iStock)
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NATO has long been a point of contention for Trump, who had to repeatedly call on member organizations to reach even the 2% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) spending threshold during his first administration. Current Trump U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker has hailed this second administration in getting NATO to commit 5% of GDP in defense spending.
nato,world,war with iran,donald trump,europe
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