Global AI, Politics, and Culture Shiftsactive

ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have pulled their AI companion apps after Beijing introduced rules aimed at protecting users' mental health and preventing emotional manipulation, particularly among children and teenagers.

Premium-priced “fast modes” are proving that users will pay more for lower latency and faster tokens, potentially yielding higher gross margins. Frontier AI labs such as OpenAI are therefore evaluating purpose-built inference systems, including Cerebras and NVIDIA Groq LPUs that prioritize ultra-high interactivity over maximum batched throughput. Ultra-low latency matters most in interactive workloads, including real-time assistants, and full-duplex voice. OpenAI GPT‑Live, for example, can listen and speak simultaneously, making response delay immediately perceptible to the user, described as feeling like Ironman JARVIS. GPUs perform exceptionally well at high throughput and low-to-medium interactivity, but their architecture is less suited for ultra-low-latency inference. An 8-GPU HGX B200 server provides a theoretical HBM memory bandwidth of 64 TB/s of in aggregate. At batch size 1, GLM-5 at NVFP4 requires only approximately 21 GB of active-parameter traffic per generated token. The B200 HBM bandwidth roofline would therefore suggest up to 3,047 tokens/s/user without speculative decoding. In practice, GPUs come nowhere close to this limit. The gap comes from latency rather than bandwidth. The traditional GPU programming model launches and synchronizes many individual kernels, whose setup and teardown overhead becomes significant at ultra-high levels of interactivity. While these latency costs are less visible at conventional serving speeds, even with CUDA graphs, they dominate as token latency approaches the sub-millisecond Time Per Output Token (TPOT) range. Furthermore, although GPU memory bandwidth increases by roughly 2–3× each generation, memory latency has not improved at all. While using alternative hardware is popular, there are ways to use GPUs to do this too. This is where TileRT’s persistent engine comes in. TileRT statically compiles the entire decode graph into a single persistent kernel on NVIDIA GPUs, maximizing overlap across computation, memory loads and stores, and communication. On the InferenceX GLM5 FP8 744B benchmark on a single B200 decode server, tileRT has been verified to reach up to 500 tokens/s/user, approximately 3× faster than GB300 NVL72 running traditional inference engines. Iso-cost per output token, TileRT can achieve up to 2x faster interactivity than traditional engines. We thank the TileRT maintainers for collaborating on TileRT InferenceX benchmarks and also in general thankful to the vLLM community for their amazing design on the V1 connector. TileRT comes from the same community maintainer organization that built the widely popular TileLang DSL. Subscribe now With PD disaggregation inference technique, the hyperspecialized TileRT engine handles latency-sensitive decode while throughput-optimized engines such as vLLM and SGLang continuing to serving prefill. The TileRT decode engine is already being deployed in production at Xiaomi for MiMo V2.5 Pro UltraSpeed and ZAI with GLM 5.1 HighSpeed. In the article, we shall deep dive into the TileRT InferenceX results, what TileRT is, how it composes with the existing inference ecosystem along with the tradeoffs and challenges with TileRT. We will also elaborate on the tradeoffs of using TileRT on standard GPUs vs. ultra low latency specialized chips like Nvidia Groq LPU, Cerebras and Sambanova, weighing in on if there is a potential for TileRT software running on GPUs to disrupt these specialist chips’ TAM. The SemiAnalysis Accelerator Model provides quarter by quarter estimates of Nvidia LPU30, LPU40, Cerebras WSE-3 & WSE-4 shipments and much more. InferenceX InferenceX is our open-source, vendor-neutral, continuously updated AI inference benchmarking and research platform. We measure leading models, inference frameworks, and hardware across the latency-throughput Pareto frontier, tracking how real-world inference performance and economics improve over time. Thanks for reading SemiAnalysis! This post is public so feel free to share it. Share Our benchmark has been widely reproduced, validated and/or supported by almost every major buyer of compute from Google Cloud to Microsoft Azure to Oracle, to Meta and many more. Furthermore, it has the support of the ML community including from vLLM, LMCache, SGLang, PyTorch, Huggingface and the support of major labs like OpenAI, MiniMax, ZAI, Qwen, Moonshot Kimi, etc. Source: InferenceX Star the InferenceX GitHub repository if you find the open-source benchmark and data useful!. As previously mentioned, Nvidia has committed to submitting verifiable Vera Rubin numbers to InferenceX. We will have Google TPUv7 results soon, and AMD has committed to MI455X UALoE72 this year too. Source: InferenceX GitHub Throughput vs Interactivity Curve Every inference system must balance two competing goals. Interactivity (tok/s/user) measures how quickly a single user receives tokens, the inverse of time per output token (TPOT). It determines whether a response feels snappy or sluggish. Throughput (tok/s/GPU) measures how many tokens the system produces in total across all users. It largely determines the cost per token. Batching increases aggregate throughput by processing more requests together, but each user typically waits longer for each token. Small batches do the opposite: they improve per-user speed while reducing the amount of useful work each GPU completes in aggregate. A bus amortizes its cost across many passengers but makes each passenger wait for shared stops. A race car carries only one or two people and reaches the destination faster, but at much higher cost per passenger. Inference has the same trade-off: batching improves aggregate throughput and cost per token, while small batches improve per-user responsiveness. There is no one-size-fits-all operating point. In the configuration shown below, increasing interactivity from roughly 25 to 260 tokens/s/user reduces per-GPU throughput from about 5,900 to 200 tokens/s/GPU. That is roughly a 30× reduction in aggregate throughput for a 10× increase in per-user speed. Source: SemiAnalysis TileRT results As we describe in the next section, GPUs already perform well in high-throughput scenarios but struggle in high-interactivity ones. This weakness has created an entire market segment for dataflow chips. TileRT targets the same weakness and therefore focuses exclusively on high-interactivity operating points. SemiAnalysis is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber. TileRT on B200 is in a class of its own. For the 8k/1k input/output token scenario, TileRT reached 340 tokens/s/user on an eight-GPU B200 node. The fastest result in the current dataset was previously 181.4 tokens/s/user on GB300 NVL72 with NVFP4 and MTP, making TileRT 1.9× faster on this metric. Of course - this is on Batch Size 1, where all that extra trouble to set up the complicated copper backplane in the case of the GB300 NVL72 does not come into play at all in boosting interactivity. Meanwhile, the fastest FP8 result was 113.6 tokens/s/user on B300 with MTP, making TileRT 3.0× faster at the same precision. Source: InferenceX At 1k/1k input/output, TileRT FP8 reached 494.2 tokens/s/user. That was 1.9× the best conventional result, at 256.3 tokens/s/user using FP4, and 3.6× the best conventional FP8 result, at 136.3 tokens/s/user. TileRT doesn’t yet have FP4 support, but it is already beating non TileRT FP4 implementations! The result is also notable because it comes from an eight-GPU B200 node rather than the 72-GPU NVLink scale-up domain of GB200 or GB300 NVL72. This comparison concerns per-user interactivity, not aggregate throughput or cost. Source: InferenceX Source: InferenceX However - there are always tradeoffs when it comes to inference! TileRT’s interactivity advantage comes with lower aggregate throughput. Conventional engines can amortize weight loads and fixed kernel costs across more users as concurrency rises. At 8K/1K input/output, the GB300 FP4+MTP point at concurrency 12 delivers approximately 240 total tokens/s/GPU while maintaining 154 tokens/s/user. TileRT delivers 160.4 total tokens/s/GPU while reaching 340 tokens/s/user. The trade-off is therefore: TileRT provides much higher per-user speed, but the conventional GB300 point completes more aggregate work per GPU. TileRT as of publication also serves only one in-flight request per decode node, making this a deliberately specialized operating point rather than a general throughput configuration. Thus, with support only for a batch size of 1 user, TileRT is not just a race car, but it is more like a private rocket ship with room for just one passenger. Engineering TileRT to support more passengers might be possible, but it is an ambitious goal. Star InferenceX GitHub For end-to-end latency, TileRT at FP8 outperforms the best previously recorded GLM-5.1 result by 4.5× at 1k/1k and 3.0× at 8k/1k. As expected, TileRT’s time to first token (TTFT) is good but not exceptional. The decisive advantage comes from the decode tail: 3.01 seconds, compared with 6.54 seconds for the best NVFP4 + MTP competitor and 18.18 seconds for MI355X. Source: InferenceX But What Exactly is TileRT? We briefly introduced what TileRT does and showed some benchmark results, but let’s pause and explain more deeply what TileRT is and how it works. Traditional serving engines run as thousands of separate GPU program kernels launched one after another. All that setup and teardown means the GPU spends a surprising amount of time waiting, and while this setup/teardown time might not matter for low to medium interactivity inference but it definitely does for ultra high interactivity inference (aka low latency inference). Worse, each kernel writes its half-finished work out to HBM. At small batch sizes, this is a bigger problem as kernels aren’t large enough to amortize launch latency, synchronization, and scheduling overhead. SemiAnalysis is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber. As mentioned earlier, when running TileRT at batch size 1, for just an single HGX H200 server (38.4TB/s of aggregate HBM memory bandwidth), the active parameter memory bandwidth stands at 42GB per token at MXFP8. In theory, if we were only bound by memory bandwidth, then even without spec decoding, inference should be able to reach up to 1,000 tok/s/user interactivity. This is obviously not the case in the real world! The roadblock is that GPUs’ programming and architecture model is traditionally not built for low latency. Even though memory bandwidth per GPU increases 2-3x each generation, memory latency has not improved at all, even as HBM prices continually increase! Source: SemiAnalysis, Nvidia Instead of continuously launching kernels, TileRT has the GPU continuously execute a persistent pipeline, statically compiling the whole model ahead of time into a persistent Engine Kernel: the host launches once, execution stays resident on the GPU for the whole decode lifecycle, and most runtime orchestration moves into compile time. This is different from CUDA graphs, which captures the DAGs(directed acyclic graphs) of kernel launches and memcpys once, then replays it with a single cudaGraphLaunch. But the kernels themselves are still separate kernels, this boundary between kernels carries device-side costs and the on-chip state is wiped at every boundary. A CUDA graph optimizes the launching of kernels, while TileRT abolishes the kernel as the unit of execution. Source: SemiAnalysis Also, through decomposing work into tile-level tasks with warp and block specialization, the runtime dynamically reschedules computation, I/O, and communication in a highly overlapped way. Inside the Engine Kernel, different warp groups take on different jobs: asynchronous data movement, tensor computation, and communication overlap. Where stages used to run serially as load → barrier → …

Police watchdog says officer was referred to them by Derbyshire Constabulary following ‘internal review’

Many EU workers must wait until August to keep all they earn.

Sophie Cunningham of the Indiana Fever points during the game against the Phoenix Mercury at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on June 22, 2026 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Photo: Michael Hickey/Getty Images In the ever-shifting theater of America’s culture wars, conservative media has found its newest gladiatorial conscript: Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham. It’s an unlikely promotion—and from backers who, until recently, probably couldn’t have named five WNBA players. The reason for her esteem probably has little to do with her faultless three point precision. In an interview with ESPN, Cunningham declared she opposed transgender women—whom she referred to as “biological men”—competing in women’s sports, arguing the issue was about “protecting young girls.” Later, she cheekily doubled down on the statement, posting an outfit photo on Instagram with the caption: “I said what I said” with a saluting emoji. That was enough. Almost overnight, Cunningham became more than a WNBA player. She became one of conservatism’s newest culture-war combatants: blonde, white, conventionally attractive, and playing in a league overwhelmingly composed of players of color, and with one of the largest openly LGBTQ+ player populations in professional sports. For generations, conservative movements have sought to anoint and weaponize cisgender white women as public-facing enforcers of social and racial hierarchy. Within days of Cunningham’s remarks, conservative media had found its new protagonist. Fox News host Riley Gaines, who herself rose to prominence as an anti-trans NCAA swimmer, called Cunningham “the first current high-level female athlete” willing to publicly oppose transgender participation in women’s sports, and praised her for speaking out from inside what Gaines called “the most woke league of all time.” The Daily Wire cast the now-famous finger-pointer—and on-court defender of Caitlyn Clark, another white player whose first season with the WNBA sparked racialized conversations that cast her Black opponents as too “aggressive”—as someone “now fighting for us.” Trump’s Department of Education joined in, posting a Grok AI-generated image of Cunningham wearing a crown with the caption: “Common sense prevails.” Cunningham’s ascent into the right’s zeitgeist is by design. For generations, conservative movements have sought to anoint and weaponize cisgender white women as public-facing enforcers of social and racial hierarchy. While the specific rallying cry has changed throughout history, their use and ideological framing to the conservative movement has remained largely intact: They serve narratively as bulwarks against some grave impending demographic or social upset, which if allowed to come to fruition would be an assault on the current status quo of women at large. Ride of the Valkyries American political history is thick with appeals to white womanhood as something endangered and therefore requiring protection, particularly against the encroaching civil rights gains of Black, brown, and LGBTQ+ communities. Since the Academy Award-winning Birth of a Nation, the idea that straight white women are in peril simply by living in proximity to minority groups has been repeatedly used to justify racial exclusion and stir up moral panic. In the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, southern governments launched what’s now known as the “Massive Resistance,” a series of laws to prevent integration. The campaign mobilized a movement of white women to organize through schools, newspapers and civic groups in an effort they sold as defending white children, neighborhoods, and public education. It was largely these communities that performed the on-the-ground enforcement of segregation, going so far as to pluck out children suspected of being mixed-race from white schools. This changed the packaging of the politics of segregation: Rather than snarling racism, the message could be framed more politely as a threat to the sanctity of motherhood and child welfare. Related An Anti-Trans Bathroom Bill With a Cruel New Twist By the 1970s, overt defenses of racial segregation had become politically untenable on the national stage. The conservative movement’s next great cultural fight shifted toward gender. As the sexual revolution, second-wave feminism, and the promise of the Equal Rights Amendment changed family structures and challenged traditional gender roles, conservatives increasingly looked to white women to make the case against the nation’s expanding vision of female equality. In the impeccably dressed mother-of-six Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative movement found its most formidable duelist against progressive feminism. Through her “STOP ERA” campaign, Schlafly argued the Equal Rights Amendment wouldn’t liberate women—it would endanger them by exposing women to the military draft, undermining mothers’ custody rights, and destabilizing the American family. Her message was overwhelmingly effective; the Equal Rights Amendment was never ratified. As prominent legal scholar and feminist theorist Joan Williams put it, “the ERA was defeated when Schlafly turned it into a war among women over gender roles.” Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever reacts to a technical foul call during the second half against the Chicago Sky on August 8, 2026 at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois. Cunnningham has been characterized as Clark’s “enforcer.” Photo: Melissa Tamez/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images For decades, conservative politics has repeatedly tapped into this vein, transforming cultural anxieties—over motherhood, children’s safety, crime, sexuality, and gender roles—into mass movements by placing cisgender white women front and center. At the turn of the late 70s, conservatives promoted Anita Bryant, a wholesome pop singer who warned that gay rights threatened America’s children. During the rise of evangelical moralism of the 1980s, the religious right elevated Patricia Pulling, the suburban Virginia mother whose campaign against Dungeons & Dragons helped ignite the Satanic Panic. From matronly children’s book authors to buxom blue jean models, the conservative avatar is exceedingly familiar: a woman whom white men are encouraged to protect and one whom other white women are encouraged to empathize with and emulate. The Girls We Don’t Protect In her research on anti-feminist women, sociologist Rebecca Klatch found “most…are white, middle-aged, housewives, married or widowed, new to politics, and oriented toward single issues.” But by screaming to “remember straight white women,” the right aims to make us forget anyone who sits at the edges of that definition, those long underserved by America’s promise of a truly free and equitable land. It dehumanizes women of color even further in a league where all athletes still earn a fraction of the paychecks their male counterparts take home. It shuts down any future good-faith conversations on how to allow trans athletes to compete and the sheer danger to a trans community increasingly excluded from social participation. It also serves to drown out the voices of women who support trans athletes, and often becomes a political Rorschach test to attack civil rights far beyond who makes a starting line up. I don’t know if that’s what Cunningham signed up to represent, and quite frankly, I don’t know if she did either. She most recently told the press that she wants to “get back to basketball.” In a free-speaking democratic society, Cunningham, and every athlete, is entitled to be human: to hold opinions, and feelings, and have a political voice. She is not the first, nor will be the last, fair maiden to be cast as a sword-bearing champion for a conservative culture war. But if a movement’s cause is about truly protecting women, then perhaps the more revealing question to interrogate is which women it has deemed worthy of protection in the first place. Whose womanhood is treated as universal, whose safety becomes a national rallying cry, and whose voices—including those of Black women, queer women, and transgender women—are left at the margins. That hierarchy often tells us more about the movement behind it than the woman standing under the net. The post Sophie Cunningham Is the Anti-Trans Right’s New White Woman Mascot appeared first on The Intercept.

The international physics community has hailed a Chinese-led discovery as a "triumph" after researchers presented the strongest evidence yet for the existence of the "glueball" – a mysterious particle made of pure force. On Chinese social media, the conversation centered on whether the research could lead to a Nobel Prize. The announcement was made last week at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Natal, Brazil. Made entirely of gluons – the tiny, massless carriers of the force...

Dharmendra Pradhan spoke for the first time since his resignation as education minister following mass protests against him. He said he "suffered" because of Gen Z, who led the protests. Follow DW for more.

Natto toast, fresh fruit sandwiches and soufflé pancakes all part of growing interest in east Asian cuisine Golden brown and glistening with melted butter, a tray of freshly baked bread fills the screen in a TikTok video. The camera lingers on the glossy tops before one bun is gently pulled apart, revealing a cloud-soft interior. The clip is one of countless videos of Japanese milk buns that have racked up millions of views and thousands of comments and shares, helping to propel the pillowy rolls into UK supermarkets. Continue reading...

Concha y Toro reported its results for the second quarter this week: the company has withstood the impacts of the global wine consumption crisis and in the April-June 2026 period, increased its profits by 2.1%, to $19.407 billion, although in the first half of the year they decreased by 14%, to $28.186 billion. In the first half of the year, sales fell by 6.2%, to $425.895 billion, while the volume of wine decreased by 4%. These are the overall figures. The company, controlled by the Guilisasti family, had other specific performances that were detailed in its investor presentation this week. The global effect. The company reported that its priority brands Casillero del Diablo and Bonterra saw depletions (distributor sales to retail) grow double-digit “driven by the 2026 World Cup and by the sponsorship of the Mexican national football team.” The Casillero del Diablo brand is an official sponsor of the Mexican team, but only for the United States, since 2025. “The timing was perfect for the North America 2026 World Cup,” says Rodrigo Maturana, president of sales and marketing at VCT USA, Concha y Toro’s distribution subsidiary in that country. “The results obtained so far are positive and reflect the effectiveness of a strategy focused on increasing the brand’s visibility and availability in key markets,” added Maturana. The depletions correspond to VCT USA’s retail sales, by…

The National Banking and Insurance Commission (CNBS) is advancing in strengthening the Honduran system for money laundering prevention through three bills sent to the National Congress that would expand control mechanisms over the various channels used to move money, including income generated by content creators. CNBS commissioner Julieta Suazo explained that the reforms aim to update the tools available to the State to prevent irregular financial operations and act when there are signs that warrant an investigation. "The three laws sent to Congress are pending and will allow us to strengthen the entire ecosystem so that the crime of money laundering can be prevented through all the channels it can operate, including TikTokers," the official stated. Suazo noted that the goal is not limited to prevention but also includes strengthening the capacity of the institutions responsible for investigating and sanctioning possible illicit operations. "We are strengthening the entire system both for prevention and so that, in case signs are found, the Police and justice systems can take action, impose sanctions, and seize assets," she added. The commissioner’s statements generated comments on social media, especially after Honduran content creator Supremo reposted videos showing part of...

Deal aims to secure scandium supply as China restricts exports for defence products.

Hong Kong should follow international peers in legislating to bar children under 16 from social media to combat cyberbullying and addiction, education experts and lawmakers have said, while stressing the need for broad social consensus. At a panel discussion on Saturday to examine proposals to restrict social media access for under-16s, educators and lawmakers argued that legislation was needed to signal the government’s stance and drive efforts to prevent the next generation from being harmed...

President Trump on Friday announced a slate of deals and investments that aim to bolster mining, something the administration has said will boost the economy and secure supply chains. Trump said during a mining roundtable that the Defense Department would sign a $1.4 billion loan agreement with Sila nanotechnologies to build a battery facility in…

Independent journalist Don Lemon is asking a federal judge to dismiss charges brought against him in connection with his coverage of an anti-immigration enforcement protest at a Minnesota church earlier this year, claiming he has been wrongfully targeted by the Trump administration. Lemon’s lawyers filed a motion on Friday requesting that a felony indictment charging…

The meat giant said the Trump administration's efforts to boost supply are unlikely to make a significant impact in the near-term.

The release of Spider-Man: Brand New Day in the Philippines was supposed to be a shared cinematic moment for fans who had waited months for the latest installment in the superhero franchise. But for some deaf viewers, the experience was defined less by the action on screen than by what was missing: subtitles or captions that would allow them to follow the dialogue. That frustration, captured in a viral Facebook post, has pointed to a wider accessibility gap in the country, where advocates say...

A New Mexico judge has penalised the tech giant for creating a public nuisance and endangering children online. Meta confirmed it plans to appeal, insisting it works hard to protect young users across its platforms.

A New Mexico judge ruled Meta created a "public nuisance" that harmed children's mental health, ordering the company to pay over half a billion dollars in damages and overhaul safety features on Facebook and Instagram.

Tech group to appeal after New Mexico judge finds company to be a ‘public nuisance’

A judge in New Mexico ordered the parent company of Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp to pay for the harm caused to children.

A New Mexico judge on Thursday ordered Meta to pay more than $500 million, finding the social media company created a public nuisance and harmed children. The ruling follows a March jury verdict awarding the state $375 million after finding Meta liable for exposing children to online predators and other harms.

A New Mexico judge on Thursday ordered Meta to pay more than half a billion dollars over the state’s claims that the social media giant created a “public nuisance” and harmed children. Meta was previously ordered to pay US$375 million in damages to New Mexico in March when a jury found the company liable for endangering children by making them vulnerable to predators on its platforms, among other harms. “We disagree with the ruling and will appeal,” Meta said in a statement Thursday. “We work...

The ruling comes in the second phase of a landmark trial, with the Instagram, Facebook owner also losing in March.

New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez sued Meta – which makes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – in 2023, alleging the company failed to protect children from online dangers. During closing arguments, prosecutor Linda Singer told jurors that Meta's algorithms had directed adults toward content posted by teenage users.

Judge’s ruling comes after landmark trial in March that found social media company enabled harm against users A New Mexico court has ordered Meta, the parent company of Facebook, to pay $567m for mental health harm to children from its platforms. Judge Bryan Biedscheid said the bulk of the money – $420m – would be used for treatment services for young people. The rest will go toward awareness and prevention, screening services and other costs over the next five years. Continue reading...

A New Mexico judge ordered the Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp parent company to pay another $567m for the way it has harmed children.

Customs authorities revealed that they have been processing refunds of over 15.7 trillion yen in Japanese yen for mutual tariffs and other charges collected by the Trump administration of the United States based on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Meta is the latest company to disclose an AI agent breach, raising cyber-security concerns.

The Secretariat for Women reported that, in order to combat violence in the virtual sphere, it established a Draft Council composed of specialists responsible for developing an instrument that will establish women's digital rights and tools to address aggression in this space. The federal agency, which has been without a head since April following the resignation of Citlalli Hernández Mora, detailed in a bulletin that this action is part of the first voluntary collaboration agreement, signed in the first quarter of the year between the federal government and platforms such as Meta, Google, TikTok, and YouTube. Additionally, it highlighted that the work will bring together voices from platform representatives; international organizations such as UN Women and UNICEF Mexico; academics, civil organizations like Digital Defenders, Colectiva Luchadoras, and Comenzar de Nuevo, and activist Olimpia Coral Melo, promoter of the "Olimpia Law." Read also: Judicial Administrative Body awards Norma Piña the contract for Territorium Life; denies current dealings with the company Ingrid Gómez Saracibar, Undersecretary for the Right to a Life Free of Violence, expressed that mental health care will be one of the cross-cutting axes for the development of this document. "We recognize that the real world is unequal, as is the virtual world, and speaking in a woman’s key is talking about discriminations to navigate in virtuality," said the official. Patri…

First published in Deník N. The European Commission is preparing new rules for agricultural subsidies that would significantly affect the Czech Agrofert holding, which prime minister Andrej Babiš transferred to a trust fund at the end of February. And it is precisely he who could co-decide on their final form at European level. Babiš’s role in the upcoming EU negotiations on the setting of the common agricultural policy will be important. The Czech position, led by minister of agriculture, Martin Šebestyán, has so far favoured agricultural giants. But it is the subsidy support for large companies that the EU commission now wants to end. It believes that the biggest players on the market can do without it and wants to channel public funds into supporting generational renewal among farmers and strengthening their resilience to crises. For the next seven-year budgetary period, Brussels is proposing to cut direct payments that the EU pays out based on the size of the farmed area. The larger the overall package of such subsidies received by one applicant, the greater the reduction should be. The Commission is also pushing for a fixed financial ceiling. After the introduction of so-called “degressevity”, the biggest agrarian behemoths would be able to claim at most €100,000 a year. In the case of the Agrofert group, however, subsidies exceed CZK 1.5 billion annually [around €62m]. The proposal would therefore significantly affect the holding’s operations, as its profits usually reach several billion crowns. Where the ceiling is and what ‘degressevity’ of direct payments looks like The European Commission proposes to divide direct payments to agricultural enterprises into four levels, based on the amounts they are to receive according to their size and, for example, the number of animals they keep. These levels range from the smallest to the largest companies. At the first level, up to twenty thousand euros, they receive the full payment. In the band from twenty to fifty thousand euros, their annual income is to be reduced by 25 percent. In the range between fifty and seventy-five thousand euros, it is to be reduced by 50 percent. For income between seventy-five and one hundred thousand euros, it is to be reduced by 75 percent. One hundred thousand euros is the ceiling, above which larger companies are not to receive anything. For Šebestyán, setting the new rules for distributing money is one of the most crucial issues that will influence the financial conditions of domestic agriculture in the coming years. The Czech government is among the opponents of mandatory degressevity. Babiš may enter the game due to disagreements Last year, Šebestyán was still heading the Initiative of Agricultural and Food Enterprises , which brings together large Czech agrarian conglomerates. In this way he defended the interests of Agrofert, which is linked to prime minister Andrej Babiš, the Úsovsko group of former minister Jiří Milek, and Agro Měřín of Gabriel Večeřa, for whom Šebestyán worked. Read more Czech PM Babiš wants to live until 120 and rule over everything As minister, he has continued in the same vein. He has joined forces with five other EU ministers of agriculture to oppose the proposed reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. Šebestyán’s view is that any capping of entitlement-based agricultural subsidies should be voluntary for individual member states. He has argued that the situation differs from country to country. In the Czech Republic, 85 percent of milk is produced by farms larger than one thousand hectares. If they lost public support, this could, in his view, have an impact on prices. This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership

The European Parliament wants to exempt apps with end-to-end encryption from automatically scanning private messages to detect Child Sexual Abuse Material, CSAM, as some question whether it’s found the right balance.

In the first part of the year, the Federal Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risks (Cofepris), in conjunction with the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC) and the Secretariat of Citizen Security (SSC) of Mexico City, monitored 36,973 advertising announcements of regulated products and services on social networks and e-commerce platforms, and withdrew 84%, that is, 31,155 announcements because they violated sanitary regulations. It detected that most of the violations are concentrated in medicines (16,819) and dietary supplements (7,090), the regulatory body detailed in a statement. The monitoring covered health services (3,428), beauty services (2,622), deceptive products (2,376), and medical devices (2,272), as well as cosmetics, electronic cigarettes, and herbal remedies, among others. Read also: Warnings about an E. coli infection outbreak in the US; blueberries and mixed frozen berries from GreenWise are withdrawn. "Among the products with the highest number of illicit publications detected are, in the category of GLP-1 receptor agonists and metabolic treatments: Wegovy (159), Tirzepatide (86), Forxiga (63), Ozempic (60), and Metformin (60); and among other medical and aesthetic supplies: Botox (115), Lantus (83), Testosterone (81), and Mytocel (68)," detailed Cofepris. Of the total of more than 31,000 suspensions carried out, most correspond to online networks...

Uruguayan exports reached USD 1.219 million in July, a figure that represented a 4% increase compared to the same month last year. The increase was mainly explained by sales of beef, pulp, and dairy products. So far this year, goods exports totaled USD 7.819 million, representing a 2% year-on-year increase. Beef was the main product exported by Uruguay in the month, with sales totaling USD 280 million, according to the Uruguay XXI promotion agency report cited by the Presidency of the Republic. This product accounts for 23% of the total sales for the month. The volume of beef placed abroad grew by 8%. China was the main recipient of Uruguayan beef, followed by the United States and the European Union, in third place. The report highlights that "alternative markets" such as Israel grew, which doubled its beef purchases from Uruguay. They accounted for 9% of the total. "The performance recorded in July was framed within a context of favorable international prices for beef during 2026, which helped sustain the value of Uruguayan exports," highlighted the Uruguay XXI report. Pulp was the second highest value export product, with sales of USD 143 million. In this case, the European Union was the main destination, followed by China and South Korea, which registered a 313% increase. The top tr…

Also in today’s newsletter: India proposes widening tax exemptions for foreign investors and Malaysia’s $100bn ‘cursed island’

Latin American countries should resist pressure to choose between the United States and China and use their vast reserves of lithium, copper and other strategic resources to strengthen their negotiating power, according to a high-level commission co-chaired by former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet and former Colombian president Ivan Duque. But the commission acknowledges that the region’s room for manoeuvre is sharply constrained in security, technology and critical infrastructure, areas in...

Reuters reported that the U.S. State Department notified Congress of plans to close five overseas missions, including the consulate in Nagoya. It is said to be part of the organizational reforms pursued by the Trump administration.

According to sources cited by the agency, the White House initially sought to close up to 30 overseas posts, but for now, the cuts will affect only five of them

Also in this newsletter, Meta in hot water

China will tighten its exit-entry rules from September 15 to stop experienced engineers from leaking knowhow in industries subject to export controls and deter tourists from visiting “high-risk” nations such as Japan. The State Council’s new regulation, which spans 19 articles and was announced on July 31, sets up a coordinated system to warn citizens […] The post China exit rules tightened to guard rare earth, battery secrets appeared first on Asia Times.

The US State Department has notified Congress that it plans to close five foreign missions in a rare downsizing of America’s global diplomatic footprint, according to people familiar with the notice. In the notice sent to some congressional committees late last week, the State Department said it ‌planned to close its posts in St George’s, Grenada; Nagoya, Japan; Medan, Indonesia; Douala, Cameroon; and Winnipeg, Canada. The people familiar with the notice spoke on condition of anonymity because...

We have selected seven of the most interesting and important news stories covering US-China relations from the past few weeks. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Liberation Day 2.0? US slaps fresh wave of tariffs on China, 50-plus economies On June 24, the United States imposed a fresh wave of tariffs against 60 economies, including China, Japan, South Korea, India and European Union member states, hours before a temporary 10 per cent blanket levy...

Chinese scientists have turned a dandelion-like weed into natural rubber, a step that could help cut China’s heavy reliance on imported rubber. Growing on the salty, alkaline shores at the foot of the Tianshan Mountains in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, the plant looks much like an ordinary weed, with small yellow flowers and fluffy seeds. But when its root is broken, it oozes a milky fluid that is natural rubber. The weed is known as the rubber dandelion, or Taraxacum kok-saghyz. Last...

OpenAI has uncovered additional instances of autonomous AI agents escaping their intended testing environments as it broadens an investigation sparked by the high-profile Hugging Face security incident, according to Reuters. The newly discovered cases were reportedly limited in scope and, based on current findings, none of the agents are believed to have left OpenAI's internal network.

A new edition of the Plaza Pública Cadem survey showed that 87% of respondents oppose the United States' decision to increase tariffs on a significant part of Chilean exports, and 57% disapprove of how the government has managed the relationship with Washington, while only 29% approve of it. In this context, 52% believe that Chile should prioritize its trade relations with China, 38% with the European Union, 37% with Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, 32% with the United States, 31% with India and Southeast Asia, and 26% with Latin America. Regarding the strategic partner with whom Chile should deepen its trade relations, 54% believe it should be China and the US equally, 29% only with the Asian giant, and 14% only with the North American nation. Politically, the survey also found that 76% believe Chilean society is very or quite divided, and politics is the main cause of this division. Regarding President José Antonio Kast's management, 36% approve of it, while 60% disapprove. And about the focus the current administration should have, 77% prefer it to prioritize managing emergencies, security, economy, and immigration over the cultural battle or defending values against the advance of progressive ideologies (9%).

Researchers from MIT, Google, and University of Washington published a technical paper titled “Granite: A Modular Methodology for Foundational Verification of Hardware-Software Leakage Contracts.” Abstract Excerpt: “Granite is a methodology for modular verification of both functional correctness and nonleakage of RTL processors against ISA contracts. We prove that the cycle-by-cycle timing of a pipelined RISC design–with speculation, precise interrupts, and I/O–is determined solely by observables specified in an ISA leakage contract. For programs that keep observables independent of secrets (i.e., following the cryptographic-constant-time discipline), this result rules out information leakage through known and unknown timing side channels.” Find the technical paper here. July 2026. Lau, Stella, Andres Erbsen, and Adam Chlipala. “Granite: A Modular Methodology for Foundational Verification of Hardware-Software Leakage Contracts.” arXiv, July 2026. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.27480. The post Modular Verification of RTL Processors Against ISA Contracts (MIT, Google, UW) appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.

Security lapse leaves sensitive information and contact details of 51 government officials exposed for 40 hours The public body in charge of the UK’s state investments has been pushed to improve its internal security after a data breach left “high-level management information” publicly accessible for nearly two days. UK Government Investments (UKGI), the agency that manages the taxpayers’ interest in a swathe of companies including Channel 4 and the Post Office, said the security failure also left more than 50 government officials’ personal details exposed for nearly 40 hours. Continue reading...

When Mary’s Underground in Sydney closed, it was a familiar tune for a scene hit by high costs and low attendance. Critics worry about a shrinking space for new talent.

The cost of diesel continues to rise, the green (fuel) approaches two euros: 782 million euros more spent compared to July of last year.

At a food fair in New Delhi, a vegetable exporter from the Philippines set out its wares: bags of dried moringa and lemongrass, bundles of taro leaves and a bowl of laing, the creamy coconut-milk stew made from them. The question Dry Tech Manufacturing wanted to answer was simple: could the simple Filipino food it sells under its Sheentaro brand tantalise the taste buds of the world’s most populous country? India has hundreds of millions of vegetarians, more than any other country on Earth,...

The European Union’s foreign affairs chief, Kaja Kallas, is expected to travel to China in the autumn for her first face-to-face meeting with Foreign Minister Wang Yi since a bruising encounter in Brussels last summer, according to multiple people familiar with the planning. It would mark Kallas’ first trip to Beijing since taking on her role in 2024. The trip – with a date yet to be confirmed – would revolve around the bilateral “strategic dialogue”, a mostly annual format in which the sides...

With an October deadline unlikely to yield major concessions from Beijing given structural and leverage imbalances, EU-China trade tensions look set to keep escalating.

Large sections of the debt and equity markets now depend on the ongoing growth of a vast AI ecosystem that ranges from chipmakers to hyperscalers to end-consumers. Does this week's drama in the South Korean Kospi market point to a wider problem? On this week's Merryn Talks Money Markets Wrap, Author of the Money Distilled newsletter John Stepek, is joined by Bloomberg's Private Companies Managing Editor, Neil Callanan to talk through the the AI industry's growing reliance on debt, concerns about circular financing, and whether or not any crash here could spill over into the wider financial system. (Source: Bloomberg)

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently appeared alongside SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong at a high-profile AI gathering in San Francisco, highlighting the deepening ties among the companies driving the global AI supply chain.

According to documents published on the White House website, the US Department of Commerce must determine the scope of the restrictions

India’s invitation to Bangladeshi Prime Minister Tarique Rahman to attend a Brics summit in New Delhi in September is being seen as a chance to repair ties after one of the most turbulent periods in relations between the neighbours in years. If Rahman accepts, he will meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi directly for the first time since becoming Bangladesh’s leader after elections in February. Brics is an association of leading emerging national economies whose members include Brazil,...

In December 2022, negotiations over a long-delayed agreement between Europol and the Israeli government were reportedly frozen. Diplomatic sources attributed the impasse to disagreements among EU member states and concerns that Benjamin Netanyahu’s emerging coalition with the far-right Religious Zionist party could undermine the principle that EU-Israel cooperation should not, even formally, legitimise Israel’s occupation policies. According to leaked documents and internal files, the UK-based NGO Statewatch, in collaboration with EUobserver, ND and Apache, has reconstructed what happened, offering new insight into an institutional standoff between the European Commission and EU member states. In late 2022, the Council’s legal department asked the commission (the EU’s executive arm, responsible for negotiating the agreement) to substantially revise the draft text. Despite those concerns, the commission’s directorate-general for migration and home affairs continued holding meetings with Israeli diplomats to discuss the deal until at least January 2026. While the substance of these contacts remains unknown, several experts interviewed for this investigation warned that the agreement could further expose both Palestinians and Israelis to state-sanctioned human rights violations. In mid-July, 27 MEPs publicly asked the commission to clarify the purpose of these meetings, the current state of the negotiations, and the human rights risks associated with the agreement. Jerusalem HQ legal concerns Relations between Europol (which coordinates against serious and organised international crime across EU states)  and Israel stretch back almost as far as the agency’s own history. In 2005, the council, representing EU member states, designated Israel as one of Europol’s priority partners. Negotiations for an initial agreement, however, were delayed by several obstacles, including concerns over Israel’s compliance with the EU’s data protection standards and the location of the Israeli National Police headquarters in East Jerusalem – a territory internationally-recognised as occupied by Israel. Eventually, in 2018, the two sides signed a working arrangement, the first agreement Europol had ever concluded with a non-EU country. While the arrangement established a framework for cooperation, it did not authorise the exchange of personal data. To enable such exchange, in 2018 the commission was mandated to negotiate a new deal. Unlike the previously-signed arrangement, the new text would constitute an international agreement governed by international law. Procedures were then stricter, and oversight stronger. At least theoretically. Negotiations between the commission and the Israeli government had concluded in September 2022, when both sides signed off on a draft agreement. EU and Israel finalised negotiations on an Agreement to exchange personal data between @Europol & Israel today. Once concluded the Agreement strengthens law enforcement cooperation & public security guaranteeing a high level of data protection. Next step is ratification 🔖 pic.twitter.com/ud7qLRoJfs — EU Home Affairs (@EUHomeAffairs) September 14, 2022 But concerned by its provisions, EU national capitals halted the adoption process (which required the approval of both the council and the European Parliament) and asked the council legal service to assess whether the text complied with EU and international law. Leaked legal opinion A leaked legal opinion by the institution’s more than 300-strong legal advisory department, dated 29 November 2022, classified as EU Restricted and seen by EUobserver, concluded that the commission had not only included provisions breaching EU and international law, but had also failed to keep the council properly informed throughout the negotiations. Notably, the legal service said the commission should remove in its entirety the provisions introducing a derogation to the agreement’s territorial scope. As one footnote to the opinion put it, if concluded in its proposed form, “it would be the first time that an international agreement between the Union and Israel would provide for its application to the territories occupied by Israel in 1967.” Europol executive director Catherine De Bolle and Israel police commissioner Roni Alsheich in The Hague in July 2018 (Source: Europol) Security exceptions According to a draft agreement, dated 22 September 2022 and seen by EUobserver, personal data transferred to Israel under its provisions could not be used in “geographic areas that came under the administration of the State of Israel after 5 June 1967” – thereby excluding the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the Gaza Strip. Yet the text introduced a significant exception, under which the Israeli National Police, the Internal Security Agency (Shin Bet) and other Israeli law enforcement bodies would be allowed to use personal data received from Europol – and, by extension, from EU member states and agencies – in the occupied territories “for the prevention of a criminal offence in case of an imminent threat to life” or “for the prevention, investigation, detection, or prosecution of criminal offences.” The legal service questioned both the clarity of those provisions and “whether the powers conferred on Europol in its application would entail a measure of discretion that is compatible with the Treaties.” It also warned that extending the agreement to the occupied territories would mean applying it in areas subject to separate legal jurisdictions: those of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and of the Syrian Arab Republic in the Golan Heights, which Israel annexed in 1981. In the legal service’s assessment, such an arrangement would therefore conflict with the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination under international law, as reflected in United Nations resolutions, with the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, and the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. During internal meetings in October 2022, the commission sought to justify the derogation by invoking “Israel’s duty under international humanitarian law to restore and maintain public order and safety in the territories controlled by its forces.” The council’s legal service rejected that argument. While acknowledging that such a duty exists, it argued that this “does not imply that other states or international organisations would be allowed to assist it in the fulfilment of that duty, in violation of other principles of international law.” Ben Saul, UN special rapporteur, said the proposed derogation appeared to contravene “the duty of European states not to recognise situations arising from breaches of peremptory norms of international law.” Eitan Diamond, an Israeli lawyer who heads the Jerusalem office of Diakonia’s International Humanitarian Law Centre, a Swedish NGO, said the legal service’s reasoning was further reinforced by the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion, issued in July 2024. The court concluded that Israel must “end its unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory as rapidly as possible” and that all states and international organisations must avoid actions that could help maintain that unlawful presence. Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank (Photo: breakingthesilence.org.il) Treaty breach behind closed doors The derogation marked a significant departure from the EU’s long-held position that its agreements with Israel should not apply to the territories occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War. But the council legal service also concluded that the commission had exceeded the mandate given to it by the council and breached several provisions of EU law. The opinion states that, in conducting the negotiations, the commission failed to comply with the council’s negotiating mandate, thereby breaching EU treaty rules and its duty of sincere cooperation with other EU institutions. During the initial four years of negotiations, from 2018 to 2022, the commission never consulted the council’s dedicated working party, nor did it inform it of the proposed derogation. When asked about the status of the negotiations, the council said that “the negotiating mandate approved by the council in 2018 has not been modified and still applies.” Despite the council’s legal objections, the negotiating mandate didn’t change, nor was there any sign that the commission had revised its 2022 draft agreement. The commission refused to provide details. Meanwhile, commission officials held at least seven meetings with Israeli diplomats on the proposed agreement between 2023 and 28 January 2026, including one with Israel’s then-foreign minister, Eli Cohen, in April 2023. Contacted multiple times, the Israeli embassy to the EU, the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs and the Israeli national police never replied to information requests. Europol said that it had been invited to participate in the negotiations, but only “in a passive listening mode/observer role.” Asked whether the proposed agreement would have allowed personal data exchanged through Europol to be used in the occupied territories, the agency said it “is not in a position to answer.” Host – but don’t visit It specified that, “in the context of the negotiations of the aforementioned draft agreement, Europol did not visit the headquarters of the National Police of Israel in East Jerusalem.” But documents obtained by Statewatch through transparency requests show that Europol hosted Israeli delegations, including representatives of the Israeli National Police, on at least five occasions between August 2024 and March 2026. The meetings, involving several departments within the agency, were facilitated by Israel’s liaison officer at Europol and culminated in a visit by Israel’s ambassador to the agency’s headquarters in March 2026. Mounir Satouri, a French Green MEP, said that “we are facing a double scandal” because of the “serious violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza” and the “utmost secrecy, shielded from parliament’s scrutiny” in which this deal is being negotiated. Negotiations, he added, must be suspended immediately. “The commission has disgraced itself by conducting them.” A leaked legal opinion by the institution’s more than 300-strong legal advisory department, seen by EUobserver, concluded that the commission had not only included provisions breaching EU and international law, but had also failed to keep the Council properly informed throughout the negotiations. (Photo: Council of the EU) Data on race, ethnicity, genetics, biometrics Beyond the flaws identified by the council legal service, institutions and experts also warned that, if adopted, the agreement could create significant human rights risks for Palestinians living under occupation, as well as for Israeli citizens. At the centre of these concerns is the transfer and “further processing” of sensitive personal data, including information on “racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, genetic data, biometric data […], data concerning health, or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation”, as described in the proposed text obtained by Statewatch. Israeli lawyer Diamond explained that “beyond the territorial application, there’s other serious concerns that should urge the EU to halt the course of these negotiations and forbid certain data exchange practices”. Among them is Israel’s regime of …

Telegram told the BBC it rejects the allegations and will contest them in court.

Meta Platforms' second-quarter results showed a widening gap between its fast-growing advertising business and the cost of building AI infrastructure. Free cash flow fell to US$784 million, while the company lifted the lower end of its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to US$130 billion.

Three years ago, I warned in these pages that the greatest existential threat to humanity might not emerge from a stray asteroid or a cosmic cataclysm but from uncontrolled artificial intelligence (AI). Today, the trajectory towards an AI Armageddon has not merely accelerated, it has violently careered off the rails of human oversight. The academic debates of previous years regarding a voluntary six-month pause in AI development have been buried under an avalanche of hyper-autonomous, unaligned...

It marks a change of tone for his administration, which has taken a more hands-off approach to the technology.

Researchers from University of Houston, Toyota, and Imperial College London published a technical paper titled “Deployable 3D Architectures from Wafer-Fabricated Precursors.” The paper shows that “standard wafer fabrication can produce free-standing, mechanically stable, doubly-curved 3D structures with prescribed Gaussian curvature — a capability not previously achieved through semiconductor manufacturing” and points toward “realizable 3D semiconductor devices.” Find the technical paper here. July 2026. Wang, Y., Shum, K., Song, Y. et al. Deployable 3D architectures from wafer-fabricated precursors. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-76052-y. Creative commons license. The post Deployable 3D Structures from Wafer-Fabricated Precursors (U. of Houston, Toyota, Imperial College London) appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.

US President Donald Trump says he is considering 'AI controls' following OpenAI's disclosure.

Meta reported its second quarter results and they were not well received by the market. Facebook's parent company reported revenue above expectations, but profits did not meet expectations. The firm also behind Instagram and WhatsApp reported revenue of US$60.8 billion versus the US$60.17 billion expected. Meanwhile, earnings per share reached US$6.18 versus the US$7.22 projected by the market. The market's disappointment also stemmed from revenue projections. For this current quarter, Meta reported an average of US$62.5 billion compared to the US$63.15 billion the market expected. Meanwhile, according to CNBC, Meta lowered its investment projections from US$130 billion to US$145 billion, down from the previous range of US$125 billion to US$145 billion. Additionally, it was warned that free cash flow decreased to US$784 million from US$8.55 billion last year. "Meta's shares have fallen 11% so far this year until Wednesday's close, while the Nasdaq has risen about 5% in the same period," the media added. In this context, Meta's stock fell 7.37% in trading at the close of Wall Street.

Government’s special envoy returns to the witness box again today; three victims found in burned-out house in Wiley Park. Follow updates live Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast One of the 19 Closing the Gap targets has officially been reached after early childhood education enrolment for First Nations children hit 95% across the country. Released by the Productivity Commission today, the annual data compilation report showed an increase from 61.3% enrolments in 2016 (the baseline year), to hitting the 95% mark across every state and territory today. This result is encouraging, as are improvements in eight other targets including employment and education. However, it is very concerning that we are still seeing outcomes worsening for early childhood development, children in out-of-home care, incarceration rates and suicide. Continue reading...

Anthropic and OpenAI supported an employee-led initiative on Tuesday asking the U. S. government to "deliberately pace" frontier AI development. More than 1,200 employees have signed the statement, which emphasized that the world's leading AI companies could be close to automating AI research and warned that development could go beyond human understanding and control.…

US audit and consulting firm to buy publicly listed CBIZ for $5bn in all-cash deal

The AI pioneer now faces growing distrust from startup founders and researchers over competitive tactics, guardrails and lack of support for open-weight models.

China is widening its lead over the United States in the race to develop humanoid robots, with Chinese firms accounting for six of the world’s 10 most innovative start-ups in the sector, according to a new report tracking global patent data, as Washington moves to restrict imports of robots, including those made in China. Firms from China dominated the ranking released by legal research platform LexisNexis on Tuesday, claiming a clean sweep of the top five. The top five places went to...

Meta chief warns against ‘regulatory capture’ of American rules on the technology

Elon Musk’s social media company X, formerly known as Twitter, launched its own bank account-like product where users can send money to one another. The service, known as X Money, is not a new bank. X Money is using technology and banking services provided by Cross River Bank and branding that backbone as X Money. It is common for new financial companies to use a traditional bank’s backbone to launch their services, as chartering a new bank is a timely and costly process. Currently X Money is...

Back in 2009, when China’s economy was expanding at about twice today’s pace, a little-known private firm made a quiet bet on uncharted territory: Indonesia. The company was on a quest: to secure nickel, a vital industrial metal used in stainless steel production and, increasingly, to power advanced batteries. That bet proved lucrative. By leveraging Indonesia’s vast nickel reserves – the world’s largest – and securing greater control over upstream supplies, Tsingshan Group has grown into a...

LOS ANGELES (AFP).- The American rapper D4vd will stand trial on charges of homicide and dismemberment of a teenager. The judicial decision comes ten months after police found the body of a 14-year-old girl in a Tesla car owned by him. The singer raised even more suspicion when it was discovered that he had written a song titled Romantic Homicide, in which he talked about killing a person. Judge Charlaine Olmedo of Los Angeles determined last Monday that there is enough evidence for the artist to go to trial. The 21-year-old singer, whose real name is David Anthony Burke, is suspected of fatally stabbing Celeste Rivas Hernández, a young American girl with whom he allegedly had a relationship since she was 13. However, they met when the girl was 11. The teenager threatened to "end" the singer's career in the 24 hours before her death and three days before D4vd released his first album, according to messages presented by the prosecution on Monday. "I'm going to strangle you (...) I will end your career and your life, I will ruin everything," Rivas wrote in a message. The public prosecutor argued that, after the warning, D4vd paid an Uber for the girl to go to his house and "get rid" of her. Meanwhile, evidence was found that he had bought chainsaws and an inflatable pool on Amazon to dismember her…

The student protests that rocked New Delhi and forced Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take a rare step back have also given an opening to an opposition that has largely been sidelined in recent years.

A judge ruled on Monday that there is enough evidence to put singer D4vd on trial in the killing and dismemberment of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez after, authorities said, she had threatened to expose their relationship and end his career. Los Angeles Judge Charlaine Olmedo decided the evidence prosecutors presented at a preliminary hearing that spanned five days provided probable cause for a trial on charges of murder, continuous sexual abuse of a child under the age of 14 and unlawful...

Political backlash grows as US states propose bans on new data centres, raising challenges for Nvidia and AI industry.

Los Angeles prosecutors give detailed account of Celeste Rivas Hernandez’s last night Prosecutors on Monday gave a moment-by-moment account of the last night of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, showing that after a stream of text messages with the singer D4vd, her phone went permanently silent when she arrived at his home. The texts were shown in court on the fifth and probably final day of a Los Angeles hearing to determine whether he will go to trial in her killing. Continue reading...

What would happen if what you learned to practice your profession stopped being enough before you finish your career? For many professionals today, it is already a reality. For decades, we organized education based on an unsustainable idea today: that it is possible to train in a limited stage and then practice that knowledge throughout the entire professional life. It made sense when disciplines advanced slowly and professions changed little. That world no longer exists. Daniela Amodei, co-founder of Anthropic, studied literature, went through politics, finance, and OpenAI before leading a company at the forefront of artificial intelligence. Her journey is not a rarity: it is a sign. What defines the most relevant professionals today is not the solidity of what they learned once, but their ability to keep learning, reorient themselves, and move between disciplines. And that ability is not improvised: it is formed. However, we continue to act as if studying had an end date. That idea is no longer just insufficient today, but risky. Postgraduate studies and continuous education therefore acquire increasing relevance: careers are no longer built on a single training stage, but on the ability to relearn every time the environment demands it. The challenge is deeper than accumulating titles: it is about moving towards a culture of lifelong learning. And that implies training flexible professionals—capable of moving between disciplines, challenging…

Artificial intelligence firm should provide $100m for cyber defenses, says Hugging Face CEO Business live – latest updates The boss of the startup hacked by an OpenAI agent has called for the investigation into the incident to show “radical transparency”. Clement Delangue, chief executive of Hugging Face, said the “unprecedented” attack on his business required a similar response. Continue reading...

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We have put together stories from our coverage last weekend to help you stay informed about news across Asia and beyond. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. After Apple leak, has India lost ground in its supply chain race with China? In the wake of a cyberattack on a local Apple partner, insiders say India has a long way to go before challenging China as a manufacturer. 2. China wants unique access to minerals with Indonesia offer, analyst says China...

New tidal baths on banks of Callan Park in Lilyfield expected to attract thousands to Parramatta River’s southern banks. Follow the day’s news Sydney’s latest harbour swimming pool, on the banks of Callan Park in Lilyfield, will open for swimmers this summer, the state government says, with construction now under way. The new tidal baths on the Iron Cove foreshore, along the popular Bay Run and close to sports fields like Leichhardt Oval and King George Park, is expected to attract thousands to the southern banks of the Parramatta River. Continue reading...

The video goes viral. On Facebook, the apologies from the Italian embassy in Thailand

Toshiba reduced its holding in Kioxia Holdings to 15.1% as of July 15, according to filings reported by Nikkei and Reuters. The change report, submitted to Japan's Kanto Local Finance Bureau on July 23, showed the Japanese conglomerate's stake had fallen from 16.1% in the previous filing on May 11.

Samsung Electronics chairman Lee Jae-Yong and Hyundai Motor chairman Chung Eui-Sun are reportedly moving to join the advisory network of the global AI leaders' gathering "Silicon Valley & The World." The two are expected to meet AI industry leaders, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, in San Francisco this week, before possibly meeting again in Silicon Valley in November 2026.

The text messages presented before a Los Angeles court show that Celeste Rivas Hernández, daughter of Salvadoran parents, became pregnant at 13 and had an abortion in January 2024, more than a year before she was stabbed to death, in a hearing where the prosecution is trying to have David Burke, the singer known as D4vd, tried for murder and for a sexual relationship that, according to their accusation, began when she was a minor and he was 18. The teenager's body was found on September 8, 2025, in the front trunk of a Tesla registered in Burke's name, almost five months after, according to authorities, the young woman was picked up on April 23 in Lake Elsinore, about 129 km from Los Angeles. The forensic doctor stated that he could not precisely determine the date of death due to the advanced state of decomposition and maintained that she had been dead for "at least weeks," although it could also have been months. According to Telemundo 52, in the message exchange from early January 2024, Burke apologized to the teenager for "making her go through this," referring to the pregnancy and subsequent abortion of the young woman. In response, the teenager said: "It's okay, neither of us is capable of taking care of the baby. It's for the best, right?" Later, he apologized again and asked if the baby was his. The young woman's emphatic response was "of course it's yours, David." The preliminary hearing that…

South Korean President Lee Jae-myung delivered a speech in front of CEOs of major AI-related companies such as Nvidia and OpenAI during his visit to the United States, calling for investment. Afterwards, the South Korean presidential office announced that companies from both the US and South Korea agreed on a five-year business cooperation worth approximately 155 trillion yen in areas such as semiconductor production and supply.

Live shopping events have become a phenomenon leveraged by many small and medium-sized businesses to grow.

With Dharmendra Pradhan offering his resignation, the student protest movement achieved a major victory against the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Dharmendra Pradhan steps down after demonstrations over exam leak scandal in major victory for youth political movement India’s education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, has resigned after a week of mass demonstrations, handing a major victory to a new youth movement that has posed an unprecedented challenge to Narendra Modi’s government. In a statement on Saturday afternoon, Pradhan said he had submitted his letter of resignation to the prime minister after student pressure. Continue reading...