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The voice actor was suspended from the game show as Sony investigates the airplane incident, which occurred on May 14.

DOJ Adds Walmart, Costco, Amazon To Beef Price Probe

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

The Justice Department has added eight major grocery chains to its beef affordability investigation.

Ground beef for sale at a supermarket. Nata.dobrovolskaya/Shutterstock

The announcement came Tuesday in a post from the department's official X account. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward sent the retailers the letters concerning recent increases in the retail price of beef.

The list includes Kroger, Publix, Walmart, Albertsons, Aldi, Ahold Delhaize USA, Costco, and Amazon.

The DOJ's Antitrust Division "has expanded its investigation to include 8 of the largest grocers when it comes to beef affordability," the post read. "Beef prices are a critical concern to Americans, and a priority for this Justice Department."

Nothing more was released about what the letters demand or when answers are due.

The department had already been investigating the big meatpackers. Cargill, Tyson Foods, JBS, and National Beef handle roughly 85 percent of the nation's beef processing.

President Donald Trump ordered the Justice Department to probe the packers in November 2025, pointing to possible collusion and price manipulation. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in May the department had already analyzed more than 3 million documents. Ranchers, cattlemen, producers, and processors all received calls or were interviewed.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched his own investigation that same month. He said Texans deserve fair prices at the store and ranchers deserve fair pay for their work.

Beef prices at the checkout have hit consumer pocketbooks. Ground beef sat near $7 a pound in the second quarter of this year. That was up about 70 percent since early 2021. Overall retail beef prices hit new records earlier in 2026.

The cattle herd itself is the smallest in decades amid drought, feed costs, and other pressures thinning the numbers. Ranchers' cut of every retail dollar has fallen to historic lows, while the big processors posted strong profits.

Earlier this spring, the department settled with Agri Stats, a data firm that shared detailed pricing and production numbers among the big processors. Officials said the practice cut competition and helped processors identify opportunities to push prices higher on chicken, pork, and turkey.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has repeatedly pointed to the tight hold the four packers have on the market. The administration has tried other moves as well-opening more land for grazing, adjusting import quotas on lean trimmings for ground beef, and pushing programs to rebuild cattle herds nationally.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 18:25

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Putin Floats 'Chance' At Peace, While Ukraine Cites 'New Dynamic' To Get To Table

Russian President Putin is this week attending the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, where he has issued key statements and at times fielded questions from the press.

Among the most important questions asked from the press pool were on the matter of whether peace in the Ukraine conflict is still possible, given that this very week things have drastically escalated.

Handout/Reuters

Among the major escalations include Zelensky's threat to 'close Russian skies' through ramped-up drone and missile attacks, or in effect threatening even civilian aviation.

Somewhat surprisingly, Putin responded by saying that yes, there is still a chance for settlement in the Ukraine crisis. As a reminder, Putin has still not yet raised the operation to status of full-scale 'war' - instead it remains at the level of Special Military Operation.

The exchange with the press is transcribed below via state media:

Reporter: Are there any chances for a settlement of the Ukrainian conflict? In my opinion, yes, there are," Putin said at the plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF-2026).

Putin: First of all, it is Russia and Ukraine that should come to an agreement, the president said.

At the same time, Russia is grateful to everyone who is trying to contribute to the resolution of the conflict, the president said, adding that China is constantly focusing on resolving the conflict and believes that the problem should be solved by peaceful means.

Putin affirmed that the two sides' intelligence services have an open line of contact. Presumably, this is how occasional prisoner swaps are conducted - which have become somewhat routine throughout the conflict, now in its fifth year.

"Indeed, contacts do exist. They continue in the current mode as well, primarily through the special services," Putin said.

However, while outlining the chances for future peace settlement, he did acknowledge the Kiev and its Western backers are making this harder by the day:

"We have just heard about threats of attacks on civilian aircraft, which is, of course, a manifestation of state terrorism. And this complicates, of course, complicates the possibility of holding bilateral peace talks," Putin said at the plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF-2026), also referring to Norway's seizure of a Russian ship.

He blasted the Western allies' silence concerning these instances of 'international terrorism' - also after this summer Ukrainian drones have attacked even Russian online retail warehouses and hubs (belonging to Wildberries in particular).

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday there was a chance of reaching an agreement to end the war in Ukraine, while Kyiv said it expected a "new dynamic" in peace efforts. --Reuters

Putin on Ukraine:

We've now heard about threats of attacks on civilian aircraft. This is, of course, a manifestation of state terrorism.

And this certainly complicates the possibilities of holding bilateral peace talks. pic.twitter.com/xqFfR5PFN2

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 3, 2026

Zelensky has openly stated he wants to make it hard for Russian society to even function, explaining that the country should feel just as much pain - if not more - than what Ukrainian citizens are suffering. He further wants the Kremlin to feel enough pressure that it will come to the negotiating table, hat in hand. But at this point the warring sides seem more hardened in their demands than ever.

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 18:00

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OpenAI President Declares The "AGI Era" Has Officially Begun

OpenAI President Greg Brockman said Thursday that he believes the company has reached artificial general intelligence, and that its latest model, GPT-6 Astra, marks the beginning of the so-called "AGI era," according to Axios.

Greg Brockman Photographer: Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg

Speaking to reporters, Brockman called Astra a "generational leap" and said it could eventually be viewed as the moment AGI arrived. "I think it might be about this model," he said when asked whether Astra meets that definition.

While there is no agreed-upon test for AGI, and Brockman said that he will leave the final judgment to users, he ended the call with reporters by saying, "Welcome to the AGI era."

Brockman's comments raise the stakes for a model OpenAI is positioning as a step beyond chatbots toward systems that can carry out complex professional work with less human direction. Astra is OpenAI's first model designated as reaching a "critical" cybersecurity threshold under the company's preparedness framework. The company earlier delayed the release to add safety testing after concluding the model could hit that threshold.

2/6 Created an underwater exploration game in one /goal prompt, all the 3D elements and sounds were made from scratch. pic.twitter.com/mTRTbjYAR7

— Pietro Schirano (@skirano) September 3, 2026

The designation means Astra can find previously unknown software vulnerabilities and build working exploits against hardened systems without being told where to look. OpenAI says the version available through standard access will refuse advanced cyber work, including exploit discovery, with broader access reserved for vetted defenders.

Axios reports:

GPT-6 Astra will first be available to a limited set of organizations in OpenAI's Daybreak Access program and will be available "in the coming days" for ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise customers and API developers.

"We will need to strengthen our ability to monitor these models either via extending chain-of-thought monitoring, integrating other ideas like activation monitoring, or finding more specific ways to get the models to be more verbose in their chain of thought," OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki said during the briefing with reporters.

Brockman's AGI remarks come a day after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang struck a similar tone about the current state of AI.

$NVDA CEO @JensenHuang told Commerce Secretary @howardlutnick at the G20 @g20org today that we are practically at AGI. I think he is right about the direction. Credit to @howardlutnick. Howard has put Commerce at the center of the AI build, and he has treated this as industrial… pic.twitter.com/6RTO0iOQmu

— Patrick F. Feeley (@PFFeeley) September 2, 2026

In a fireside chat Wednesday with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Huang said systems would "achieve essentially what people call AGI" in the next couple of years, and that "we're practically there today." Whether that milestone "means a lot or it doesn't mean anything" is a separate question, the Nvidia chief continued.

"Suppose, several hundred years ago, humans, in order to have a more civil society, manufactured one of the most important things in the world, which is called education intelligence. Through universities and schools we manufacture intelligence and we manufacture stability at scale," he added. "Without it, how would we have civilization? And so now we're creating the digital version of that. We're manufacturing now intelligence digitally at scale so that even countries and people who don't have access to the highest levels of education now have the benefits of the highest levels of education. Okay? And so that's the simplest way of thinking about what is happening right now."

Tyler Durden Thu, 09/03/2026 - 17:40

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