New Dedicated Agency Established to Prevent Real Estate Fraud.
• New York City Mayor Eric Adams has established a dedicated agency to strengthen the response to home ownership fraud. On the 24th,
Mayor Adams announced the creation of the city’s first Office of Deed Theft Prevention (ODTP) under the Department of Finance (DOF).
• The agency will be tasked with monitoring “deed theft”—real estate ownership fraud involving forged documents or fraudulent transactions—
and providing legal support to affected residents. It will also conduct fraud prevention education and work with
law enforcement and the State Attorney General’s office to help victims recover ownership of their homes.
• “Deed theft” is a criminal act where a property’s title is transferred to another person’s name or sold at a low price through forged documents
or fraudulent contracts without the actual homeowner’s consent. Victims often discover far too late that their home has legally passed to someone else,
frequently resulting in the loss of residency rights or long legal battles.
H Mart Cherry Hill, NJ Grand Opening.
• H Mart, the largest Asian supermarket chain in North America, officially reopened its Cherry Hill,
New Jersey location (1720 NJ-70, Cherry Hill Township) on the 23rd. To provide a more modern and comfortable shopping environment,
the store underwent a complete renovation after temporarily suspending operations in June of last year.
• Store Features Size: Approximately 39,000 square feet across two floors.
Layout: Enhanced facilities and a wider variety of products, offering a strengthened “one-stop shopping” experience.
Food Hall: Includes six popular brands such as Kyodong Jjamppong, Daily Seoul, Mirim, The Dak, Tteokdabang(떡다방),
and Tiger Sugar, offering Korean, Chinese, street food, and desserts.
• H Mart operates over 100 store in 18 states in U.S. and employed about 6000 workers, and maintains 5 distribution centers and food processing facilities.
Digital Realty Firm to Purchase Re/Max for $550 Million.
• Tech-focused The Real Brokerage is to purchase real estate firm Re/Max Holdings in a deal valued at $550 million, the companies announced Monday.
• Under the terms of the deal, Re/Max shareholders can choose between 5.15 shares of the new combined entity or $13.80 in cash for each share they own.
After the deal closes, Real shareholders will own about 59% of the new entity, with Re/Max shareholders owning the rest, the companies said.
• Re/Max’s shares closed Friday at $7.99, giving the company a market value of around $160 million,
not including a roughly 40% stake of nontraded shares controlled by its co-founder Dave Liniger.
Its shares have been under pressure because of declining revenue and a falling number of Re/Max agents in the U.S.
• In Monday’s trading, Re/ Max shares closed up around 24%. Real Brokerage closed down about 25%.
DOJ Drops Investigation of Powell.
• The Justice Department said it would end its criminal investigation of Fed Chair Jerome Powell,
an attempt to clear the obstacle that has stalled Kevin Warsh’s confirmation as his successor.
• Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, announced the move Friday,
saying her office is closing an inquiry into Powell’s testimony to Congress about cost overruns on the renovation of two historic Fed buildings.
A federal judge had already ruled that the grand jury subpoenas served on the Fed in January were improper and found
“essentially zero evidence” of criminal wrongdoing.
• Trump, a Republican, told Fox Business last week that if Powell didn’t leave, “I’ll have to fire him.”
• Trump has separately attempted to fire another Senate confirmed Fed governor, Lisa Cook.
The Supreme Court has allowed Cook to remain at the Fed while she challenges her removal.
Angst About Jobs Colors Economic Outlook
• The unemployment rate is low. The stock market is high. Consumer spending is healthy.
But ask Americans how they feel about the economy,
and they sound like there’s a recession going on.
• That matters first because when people’s perceptions of the economy sour, their behavior can change and slow the economy.
And second, because sometimes they are seeing real problems that have yet to show up in the hard data.
• The gloom is understandable. The Iran war has driven up gasoline prices.
Whiplash tariff policies are hammering small businesses.
The job market, while healthy by a lot of measures, is dotted with news of high-profile layoffs.
Still, the sentiment figure contrasts with other economic reports out this week suggesting the economy is not close to a recession.
• But hiring is extremely low, so people seeking work keep striking out. And that could be coloring perceptions
|of the job market for the job seekers themselves, and for their friends and family.
Antigovernment Violence Reaches 30-Year High
• On Saturday, a gunman rushed a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Multiple administration officials were present, including President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, FBI Director Kash Patel and several cabinet members.
The incident, allegedly perpetrated by a 31-year-old Caltech grad, has refocused attention on violence in American politics.
In January, a man broke windows at Vance’s home with a hammer.
• In March, the Justice Department charged two men with attempting
to carry out an attack near New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s residence.
• Domestic attacks and plots against the U.S. government are at their highest levels since at least 1994,
according to data from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. For the first time in 20 years,
they are coming from extremists on the left in greater numbers than the right. Of the 20 attacks and plots recorded in 2025,
the center categorized 10 as originating from the extreme left and eight as coming from the extreme right.
Five Amazing Tech Innovations We Should Expect in the Next 25 Years
• Devices controlled by mind : Forget the keyboard and the mouse.
In 25 years, most people will be using brain-computer interfaces to control devices with their thoughts,
says Bin He, professor of biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.
These interfaces will be able to interpret brain activity and convert people’s intentions into commands that a computer can understand.
• Space mining: Advances in AI and robotics will make it feasible to access resources on the moon,
asteroids and eventually other planets, says Karen Panetta, a professor at Tufts University School of Engineering and a fellow at IEEE,
the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
She says autonomous robots will be able to mine raw materials and use them to build space stations and equip missions for deeper space exploration.
• Humanoid robots at home: Robots, of course, could take any form,
but Englot says humanoid robots offer advantages, especially in the home.
“We all live in spaces that are built for humans, with interfaces intended for humans, like stairs, doorknobs and drawers.
I think a humanoid robot is the most obvious solution to try to emulate our own interactions with all those devices in our home.”
• Private weather control : Future technologies could even allow companies to alter the course of a storm or reduce its intensity.
“If you are a major agricultural producer, then you have a vested interest, as does your insurer, to make sure that you don’t have catastrophic floods,”
she says. “So this may become an inevitability if we want to stabilize our food supply.”
• Abundant energy from nuclear fusion : Fusion has finally passed a key milestone— achieving net energy gain.
“In a controlled lab environment, you can now get more energy out of a fusion reaction than you had to put in to create it.
That’s the beginning of turning fusion from a science project into an engineering and scaling project.”
Unlike fission, nuclear fusion generates “no long-lived radioactive waste,”
Bechtel says, and unlike fossil fuels, it doesn’t involve burning finite resources and creating carbon emissions.
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