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Japan’s central bank just pushed rates to a three-decade high while the yen promptly weakened.
Bank of Japan Hikes Rates to 1.25%, Highest Level Since 1995
The Bank of Japan raised its policy rate by 25 basis points to 1.25%, its highest level since 1995, accelerating a tightening campaign aimed at keeping inflation from getting away from policymakers. The move came just three months after the BOJ’s previous hike, compared with a six-month gap before that, as Japan wrestles with inflation, a historically weak yen, and growing pressure to normalize monetary policy.
Japan spent decades trying to manufacture inflation. Now the BOJ is raising rates to make sure it doesn’t manufacture too much of it.
The decision passed 7-2, with board members Toichiro Asada and Ayano Sato dissenting. Both were appointed earlier this year by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and are viewed as reflationists. The hike itself was hardly a curveball: Nearly 90% of economists surveyed by CNBC expected a quarter-point increase and respondents even correctly anticipated who would dissent.
The BOJ said it acted because of the risk that inflation could move above its 2% target, adding that it wants to stabilize underlying inflation at “around 2%” without allowing price increases to overshoot and damage the economy later. August headline inflation was 1.9%, while core inflation slipped to 1.7% from 1.8% in July. Asada argued those numbers justified holding rates steady, while Sato said economic and price conditions had not substantially accelerated. Meanwhile, Washington has pushed Tokyo toward tighter policy, with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently urging BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda to take “decisive market and monetary steps.”
Of course, all while Trump has been bellyaching about rates being too high here. Ulterior motives? Of course!
Markets supplied the day’s punchline. The yen weakened about 0.45% to 156.64 per dollar after the decision, while Japan’s benchmark 10-year government bond yield fell 4.9 basis points to 2.947%. That leaves the BOJ trying to thread an unusually small needle: Tame inflation without kneecapping growth, support a battered currency without overtightening, and navigate a government that has favored easier monetary policy and fiscal expansion.
Editor: Japan finally gets its highest interest rate since 1995, and the yen responds by getting cheaper. Central banking—the profession where even doing exactly what everyone expected can produce exactly what you didn’t want.
Source: CNBC
The Homeland Security secretary reportedly shares a Capitol Hill house with a powerful congressman whose committee oversees parts of DHS—which turns an odd-couple roommate story into an ethics question with considerably less sitcom potential.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s Capitol Hill ‘Crash Pad’ Raises Ethics Questions
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has reportedly shared a $1.8 million Capitol Hill townhouse for three years with Republican Rep. Jason Smith, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, according to the Daily Mail. Mullin owns the property, his representative describes him as Smith’s landlord, and Smith confirmed the living arrangement—but the report says neither side disclosed how much rent Smith pays and that there is no public documentation of a rent transaction.
Washington has produced plenty of strange bedfellows, but this one comes with a landlord, a cabinet secretary, and congressional oversight under the same roof.
Mullin, 49, is married with six children whose family home is in Oklahoma, while Smith, 46, is unmarried. Sources described their Washington home as a busy “crash pad,” with one telling the Daily Mail: “People are all always going in and out of that place, for work, for fun, it’s like a college dorm.” The paper reported seeing Mullin’s security detail at the property and four unidentified people in suits leaving the house.
The potentially consequential issue is financial rather than residential. House rules restrict members from accepting gifts above certain limits, and the Daily Mail raises the question of whether below-market rent could constitute a gift. The article does not establish that Smith receives discounted or free housing. It reports that Mullin Realty LLC lists residential real estate worth between $1 million and $5 million generating $50,000 to $100,000 in rental income, but says Smith’s public expense disclosures do not specifically identify rental payments to Mullin. The arrangement also has an institutional wrinkle: Smith chairs Ways and Means, which has jurisdiction touching portions of the department Mullin runs.
The two men have been close friends since serving together in the House, reportedly bonding over early-morning workouts, and Smith has publicly praised Mullin as a “man of God, a husband, and a father.”
Whether Smith pays ordinary market rent—and whether the arrangement creates any disclosure, gift, or conflict issue—is the part worth watching.
Editor: Washington roommates are nothing new. But when your roommate chairs a committee with oversight touching your federal department, “who Venmoed whom for rent?” becomes considerably more interesting than who forgot to buy toilet paper.
Source: Daily Mail
An ICE officer accused of shooting a fleeing Venezuelan man through a front door is finally in a Minnesota courtroom after an interstate extradition fight that lasted for months.
ICE Agent Christian Castro Faces Minnesota Charges After Months-Long Extradition Standoff
ICE officer Christian Castro made his first Minnesota state-court appearance Thursday on assault and false-reporting charges stemming from the January shooting of Venezuelan immigrant Julio Sosa-Celis. The 52-year-old officer arrived from Texas after a months-long dispute over extradition, was arrested Wednesday in Minneapolis, and was released on bail Thursday evening.
The case has gone from an immigration raid to a shooting, disputed officer accounts, dropped charges against the man who was shot, and an interstate legal brawl over who gets to put the federal agent on trial.
Minnesota authorities allege that on Jan. 14, Castro fired through the front door of a house Sosa-Celis had entered while fleeing, hitting him in the leg. Authorities say the bullet continued into the wall of a child’s bedroom. Federal prosecutors initially charged Sosa-Celis and another man with assault, but those charges were later dropped after the Justice Department acknowledged that officers involved in the incident—including Castro—had made untruthful statements about what happened.
Castro was arrested in Texas in May and spent roughly three months jailed there while Minnesota sought his extradition. Minnesota officials eventually sued Texas, alleging Gov. Greg Abbott’s failure to approve the extradition was unlawful, but a federal judge declined to intervene. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said Thursday that the lawsuit has now been dismissed. Castro’s lawyer said he had intended to surrender at his attorney’s Minneapolis office before state authorities arrested him. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty had a rather less accommodating interpretation: “You do not get to dictate how you are taken into custody.”
Castro also faces federal charges accusing him of lying to investigators about the shooting, although federal prosecutors did not charge him with a civil-rights offense over the shooting itself. His attorney Rolando Cantu said Castro intends to plead not guilty to both the federal and state charges, telling NPR, “We’re ready to fight this case in court.” Castro is expected in federal court Friday, with his next Minnesota state-court appearance scheduled for Nov. 3.
Editor: When the original charges against the guy who got shot disappear because investigators say officers weren’t truthful, and one of those officers winds up facing charges himself, the phrase “the story has changed” is doing some industrial-strength lifting.
Source: NPR
The Trump administration is reviewing at least a dozen data-center projects involving 17,600 acres of federal land across the West—the cloud has decided it needs some real estate and Donald Trump is just the guy to give it away.
Trump Administration Eyes 17,600 Acres of Public Land for Massive Data Center Buildout (Bailout?)
The Trump administration is considering at least 12 data centers and related infrastructure projects involving roughly 17,600 acres of federal public land across six Western states, according to public records reviewed by The Washington Sun. The proposals span Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming, and several local officials told the publication they didn’t know some of the projects were even under consideration.
AI’s appetite for electricity, water, and land is getting so large that Uncle Sam may soon be one of its landlords.
The push isn’t accidental. President Trump signed an executive order in July 2025 directing federal agencies to accelerate permitting for major data-center infrastructure and make appropriate federal lands available for development. The proposals uncovered by The Sun range from full data centers to access roads, telecommunications lines, and water pipelines. Most remain in early stages, and the Bureau of Land Management says projects will undergo environmental review before approval.
The biggest proposal is hard to miss: Nuclear startup Valar Atomics is proposing a roughly 10,200-acre Utah project combining a data center with small nuclear reactors near Green River, plus another Utah development called the “Raceway Gigasite.” In Idaho, Rhea Data has proposed a 4-million-square-foot, multi-building data center across 3,226 acres of public land, complete with natural-gas generation and electrical infrastructure. Environmental groups are raising concerns about electricity rates, pollution, water consumption, and the precedent of putting industrial-scale computing facilities on federal land.
So far, BLM says it has approved a Townsite Data Center project on 88.5 acres of public land in Nevada, explicitly linking the approval to the administration’s effort to accelerate data-center permitting. The larger question is how much federal land ultimately gets transformed to feed America’s AI boom—and how much say nearby communities get before the servers arrive.
Editor: We spent years talking about “the cloud” as though AI lived somewhere between heaven and Wi-Fi. Turns out the cloud needs thousands of acres, power plants, pipelines, roads, and enough electricity to make your laptop charger feel personally inadequate.
Source: The Washington Sun
Gasoline is already averaging $4.44 nationally and diesel $6.40, but analysts say damaged Saudi oil infrastructure could keep America’s fuel-price headache alive for weeks—gas pumps haven’t finished mugging your wallet yet.
Gas Prices Are Surging—and Analysts Warn the Worst May Still Be Ahead
American drivers are facing another potentially steep jump in fuel prices as damage to Saudi Arabia’s critical East-West oil pipeline compounds disruptions from the U.S.-Iran war, according to The Washington Post. Regular gasoline averaged $4.44 a gallon nationally Thursday, while diesel hit $6.40, with several Midwestern states recording overnight gasoline increases above 20 cents.
The nastier number may be diesel: When trucking fuel hits record prices, the pain doesn’t stay at the gas station—it rides straight into the price of almost everything delivered by truck—which is nearly everything.
The immediate problem is Saudi Arabia’s 745-mile East-West pipeline, which has become a crucial alternative to shipping through the disrupted Strait of Hormuz. The Trump administration has suggested repairs could happen quickly, but outside analysts cited by the Post expect a substantially longer disruption.
Andrew Lipow, an oil-infrastructure consultant, told the paper repairs could “take a month or two,” adding: “It is not like you can just go to Costco and pick that stuff up off-the-shelf.”
Independent reporting underscores the uncertainty: Reuters reported Thursday that three pumping stations were damaged and several industry sources estimated full repairs could take five to six weeks, although partial operations might resume sooner.
The Midwest is getting an additional kick from an outage at ExxonMobil’s Joliet refinery near Chicago. According to the Post, regular gas jumped 25 cents in a day in Iowa, 23 cents in Wisconsin, and 22 cents in Michigan.
The broader global picture isn’t much prettier: Emergency reserves have been heavily drawn down, Chinese oil demand has rebounded, and traffic through Hormuz remains below prewar levels. There is some counterpressure, however—Saudi Arabia is rerouting crude through Oman, and oil prices eased Friday as fears of an immediate supply crunch moderated.
Washington is already looking for options, including discussion of restricting U.S. diesel exports, though economists cited by the Post warn that could fail to solve the underlying shortage and potentially make matters worse. For consumers, the bigger issue is how long the Middle East disruptions last and how quickly Saudi infrastructure returns to service.
Editor: Remember when $5 gas was the number everybody used to illustrate energy misery? We’re knocking on that door again, while diesel has already kicked it open, walked inside, and started rearranging the furniture.
Source: The Washington Post (no paywall)
A federal jury convicted a longtime Customs and Border Protection officer of using his badge and government-issued gun to rob and sexually assault women in Chicago-area hotels.
CBP Officer Convicted of Sexually Assaulting and Robbing Women at Chicago-Area Hotels
A federal jury in Illinois found Customs and Border Protection officer Luis Uribe guilty Thursday on all charges stemming from attacks on four women in Chicago-area hotels in 2022, including 10 counts of deprivation of rights and one count of brandishing a firearm. Prosecutors said Uribe used his federal badge and CBP-issued gun to threaten and rob the women, sexually assaulting two, and attempting to sexually assault the other two.
This wasn’t merely criminal conduct, according to the verdict—it was a federal officer using the authority and weapons entrusted to him by the government against the very people that authority was supposed to protect.
Prosecutors said Uribe, who worked at O’Hare International Airport, entered the women’s hotel rooms on at least six occasions between February and October 2022 in Schaumburg and Naperville. All four women were of Chinese descent, and at least two said they were sex workers. Prosecutors said Uribe sometimes followed the women to their rooms or forced his way inside. In one incident, court records say, he threatened a woman with a knife and attempted to assault her before someone knocked on the door.
Uribe denied the allegations at trial. His lawyers acknowledged that he visited sex workers but argued that the encounters were consensual and that the women had falsely accused him after seeking his assistance with immigration matters. Uribe testified, “I never robbed anybody in my whole life.” The jury rejected that defense. Uribe, 45, is a former Marine who has worked for the federal government since 2009 and, according to the U.S. attorney’s office, remains employed by Customs and Border Protection. CBP said it takes misconduct allegations seriously and expects employees to meet “the highest standards of integrity, professionalism, and personal conduct.”
Uribe was indicted in December 2025 and has been detained since his arrest that month. His attorneys unsuccessfully sought to have the indictment dismissed before trial. He is scheduled for sentencing Jan. 21, 2027, and faces a mandatory minimum of seven years and a possible maximum sentence of life in prison.
Editor: A badge and a government-issued gun are supposed to come with more accountability, not provide accessories for the crime. A federal jury has now delivered its answer on which side of that line Uribe landed.
Source: The New York Times