Daily SumUp

An attack by the United States or Israel would have profound effects on domestic Iranian politics, the strategy of U.S. Gulf allies, and broader regional dynamics. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For years, a Japanese man lay motionless, paralyzed from the neck down after a devastating spinal cord injury. Doctors doubted he would ever stand again. Today, he can not only stand independently but is learning to walk once more, thanks to an injection of laboratory-grown stem cells into his spinal cord.Researchers at Keio University in Tokyo treated four fully paralyzed patients using neural stem cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS). Remarkably, half of the patients showed significant improvements. One can now stand, while the other can move his arms and legs.“That’s a great positive outcome. It’s very exciting for the field,” says James St John, a translational neuroscientist at Griffith University in the Gold Coast, Australia. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greenland’s leader has accused the US of a “very aggressive” show of power by sending a delegation to the island as President Trump continues to express plans to take it over. NY Post reporter Anthony Blair shares this story. Left-wing Prime Minister Mute B. Egede lashed out late Sunday as news broke of the planned visit led by Vice President JD Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, along with White House National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

President Donald Trump said he was placing 25% tariffs on auto imports, a move the White House claims would foster domestic manufacturing but could also put a financial squeeze on automakers that depend on global supply chains.“This will continue to spur growth,” Trump told reporters Wednesday. “We’ll effectively be charging a 25% tariff.”The tariffs, which the White House expects to raise $100 billion in revenue annually, could be complicated as even U.S. automakers source their components from around the world. The tax hike starting in April means automakers could face higher costs and lower sales, though Trump argues that the tariffs will lead to more factories opening in the United States and the end of what he judges to be a “ridiculous” supply chain in which auto parts and finished vehicles are manufactured across the United States, Canada and Mexico. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Thursday announced that viral use of ChatGPT's new image-generation AI, introduced earlier this week, is overloading the company's servers. While it is "super fun seeing people love images" in ChatGPT, "our GPUs are melting," Altman posted on X on Thursday. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The problem with the now infamous Signal chat read around the world is not just that sensitive military-operations details were broadcast, but that this reveals a pattern of what appears to be institutional dishonesty inside the Trump administration and the legal ramifications that presents.While the national security sphere operating in secret is nothing new, the leak exposes a system of broken accountability, where high-ranking officials can spill military secrets with apparent near-total immunity. Despite potential violations of classification protocols, federal record-keeping laws and promises of operational security, the leaders look to face no meaningful legal consequences. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bill Gates predicted that advancements in artificial intelligence will significantly reduce humanity’s role in many traditional tasks such as medicine and education — and the seismic shift could happen in less than 10 years.During a recent interview with comedian Jimmy Fallon on NBC’s “The Tonight Show,” the Microsoft co-founder described a future where humans are no longer necessary “for most things” because AI technology will readily perform tasks that currently require specialized human skills.Today, expertise in fields such as medicine and education remains “rare,” Gates said, adding that those areas depend on “a great doctor” or “a great teacher.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

 President Donald Trump said Wednesday he was placing 25% tariffs on auto imports, a move the White House claims would foster domestic manufacturing but could also put a financial squeeze on automakers that depend on global supply chains.“This will continue to spur growth,” Trump told reporters. “We’ll effectively be charging a 25% tariff.”The tariffs, which the White House expects to raise $100 billion in revenue annually, could be complicated as even U.S. automakers source their components from around the world. The tax hike starting in April means automakers could face higher costs and lower sales, though Trump argues that the tariffs will lead to more factories opening in the United States and the end of what he judges to be a “ridiculous” supply chain in which auto parts and finished vehicles are manufactured across the United States, Canada and Mexico.To underscore his seriousness about the tariffs directive he signed, Trump said, “This is permanent.”Shares in General Motors fell roughly 3% in Wednesday trading. Ford’s stock was up slightly. Shares in Stellantis, the owner of Jeep and Chrysler, dropped nearly 3.6%. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The United States and Somalia have conducted air strikes targeting the Islamic State (IS) group in northern Somalia, the country's federal government and the US military said Wednesday.The extremist group has a relatively small presence in the east African country compared to the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab, but experts have warned of growing activity.A coordinated operation led by the United States African Command (AFRICOM) with the federal government had targeted "known hideouts of ISIS terrorists" based in the Golis mountains in the semi-autonomous Puntland region, Mogadishu said, using another acronym for IS.The strikes were carried out Tuesday night, a short statement said, adding initial reports "suggest that multiple ISIS fighters were killed, with no civilian casualties reported". No further details were given. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Beyond his public career, Dick Carlson was a devoted father with a knack for making life an adventure. He spoke to his sons daily and maintained a longstanding tradition of weekly lunches with them at the Metropolitan Club in Washington, always preceded by a dice game.“Throughout his life, he fervently loved dogs,” his obituary noted—a simple but defining trait of the man he was. He is survived by his two sons and five grandchildren. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The watchdog group American Oversight has filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Washington seeking a judge’s order to preserve all of the Signal messages on the group chat of top Trump administration national security officials discussing this month’s military strikes on the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The Signal app has a function that automatically delete messages and the lawsuit was brought, it says, to compel the Trump officials to “fulfill their legal obligations to preserve and recover federal records created through unauthorized use of Signal for sensitive national security decision-making.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wouldn’t rule out that someone would lose their job over the Signal leak scandal during a briefing Wednesday afternoon.Leavitt was asked by a reporter if she would definitively say that no one would be fired after a journalist was accidentally added to a Signal thread with top U.S. officials discussing military plans. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Taiwan's defence ministry said Wednesday it will send senior officials to the United States this week for a handover ceremony of its first F-16V fighter jet under a multi-year arms deal.The visit comes nearly six years after Washington approved the $8 billion deal for 66 warplanes during US President Donald Trump's first term."The first aircraft has now completed its full assembly," Chiang Yuan-chi, director of the Air Force's planning division, told a news conference.Taipei has "assigned a deputy minister to lead an Air Force delegation to the US for the ceremony", said Chiang. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Spanish police said on Wednesday they had arrested a man suspected of strangling an 80-year-old US Catholic priest during a robbery in the southern city of Malaga.Father Richard Gross, who was from the US city of Boston, was found dead in January inside a holiday apartment he had rented in the center of the city, where he was preparing to embark on a cruise.Officers arrested a 40-year-old French national on Tuesday in the southern city of Seville, Spain’s national police said in a statement. They said he was detained on suspicion of murder.Another suspect was already in custody: a 27-year-old North African man arrested in late January. Police said they believed he acted as a lookout during the attack. Both men have criminal records related to theft. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Scientists in China have transplanted a modified pig liver into a brain-dead human – the latest step toward using pig organs to help extremely ill patients with liver failure.In one of the first trials of its kind, surgeons from Xijing Hospital at the Fourth Military Medical University in Xi’an attached a genetically modified pig liver to a brain-dead patient in March 2024, two months after a related experiment in the United States. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The location of a chest Christians believe holds the Ten Commandments could have been under our noses this entire time.At least, that’s what these CIA documents claim.The Ark of the Covenant (no, not the Indiana Jones movie) was built by Israelites around the 13th century BC, according to the Bible.It’s believed that Moses then put the stone tablets which have the Ten Commandments on them inside of the chest. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"Obviously, someone made a mistake -- someone made a big mistake -- and added a journalist. Nothing against journalists, but you ain't supposed to be on that thing," Rubio told a news conference in Jamaica. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Poland’s government will on Wednesday suspend the right to seek asylum, the prime minister said, as the European Union member faces irregular migrant arrivals from neighboring Belarus.Poland and other EU states along the bloc’s eastern edge have accused Russia and its ally Belarus of orchestrating a campaign of pushing thousands of migrants over their borders in recent years.“This evening the government will adopt a decree suspending the right to apply for asylum. Just as I announced — without delay,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on social media platform X.The announcement came after Poland’s President Andrzej Duda — allied with the right-wing opposition — announced he signed into law a bill allowing the government to temporarily limit asylum rights.The Polish senate voted through the bill earlier this month.The legislation also provided for the possibility of extending the restriction with parliament’s approval.The European Union last year said member states bordering Russia and Belarus were allowed to limit the right of asylum for migrants in the event of their “weaponization” by Moscow and Minsk. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Russia Ukraine War Updates: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted a key meeting at the State Department with the Foreign Ministers of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—Margus Tsahkna, Baiba Braže, and Kęstutis Budrys. The meeting comes amid escalating hybrid attacks from Russia, and the leaders discussed critical issues related to supporting Ukraine and enhancing NATO's defenses. The Baltic counterparts emphasized the need for increased allied support for Ukraine, as well as stronger cooperation within NATO to address the growing security threats in the region. This diplomatic gathering highlighted the urgency of a unified response to Russian aggression and the protection of European stability. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"A series of strikes by the US aggression have hit the south and north of the capital," the Al-Masirah channel said, without providing further details.The station had earlier reported 17 raids by the United States "on the Saada governorate", on top of two more on Amran.The Iran-backed rebels' news agency, Saba, said "the American aggression targeted the Oncology Hospital building in Saada".The hospital, which Huthi media said was under construction, was also hit last week.The rebel health ministry said two civilians were wounded in the latest hospital attack, which they described as "a full-fledged war crime".Early on Wednesday, a Huthi military spokesperson said the group targeted "enemy warships in the Red Sea, led by the US aircraft carrier (USS Harry S.) Truman" blamed for the Yemen strikes.The rebels also claimed a drone attack on Tel Aviv, but did not specify when it occurred. Israel did not report such an attack. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The company, which generates more than a third of its revenue in the United States, intends to "support the country's focus on bolstering the nation's energy infrastructure to power AI growth, boost domestic manufacturing, and strengthen energy security", according to a press release."This new planned investment is expected to create over 1,000 new jobs and help Schneider Electric continue to play a leading role in shaping a more innovative, affordable, and energy-efficient future in the U.S.", it said. The French company already employs 21,000 staff in the country.Schneider's announcement comes amid President Donald Trump's promise to impose "reciprocal" customs duties on all US trading partners, in the hope of attracting more foreign manufacturers."Schneider Electric's significant investment is a clear sign that manufacturing in America is moving forward -- driving economic growth, innovation and job creation across the country," National Association of Manufacturers President Jay Timmons was quoted as saying in the communique. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

NATO on Wednesday clarified comments that Secretary-General Mark Rutte made earlier in the day, when he suggested that four U.S. soldiers who went missing while training in Lithuania had died, even though the U.S. Army said their fate was not yet confirmed.“The search is ongoing,” NATO said in a statement posted on X. “We regret any confusion about remarks @SecGenNATO delivered on this today. He was referring to emerging news reports & was not confirming the fate of the missing, which is still unknown.”The U.S. Army said the Hercules armored vehicle the four U.S. soldiers were in during a training exercise had been found submerged in a body of water. It said recovery efforts were underway by U.S. Army and Lithuanian Armed Forces and civilian agencies.The soldiers, all from 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, were conducting tactical training when they went missing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Elon Musk, the billionaire advisor to President Donald Trump, has offered his technical experts to investigate how a journalist was added to an official chat on Yemen air strikes, the White House said Wednesday."Elon Musk has offered to put his technical experts on this to figure out how this number was inadvertently added to the chat," Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told a briefing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Since discovering Chinese toy company Pop Mart a year ago, Carrillo has bought nearly 100 of its products, many of which she gives as gifts to friends and family. Her love for the brand has sent her on a hunt for its characters, including travelling to Singapore for just 24 hours in hopes of finding a limited edition or waiting four hours in the rain in Taiwan just to come away with one collectible.And Carrillo isn’t alone. A search of “Pop Mart” on TikTok renders hundreds of thousands of hauls and unboxing videos. Fans have flocked overseas to look for sold out or exclusive products at different Pop Mart stores, roboshops (vending machines), or pop-ups; and groups on Facebook and WeChat trade updates on when the brand comes out with new lines or restocks its products.That virality has translated into a recent boom for the company, which was founded by 38-year-old entrepreneur and now-billionaire Wang Ning in 2010: last year its shares shot up by almost 370%, ahead of most members on the MSCI China Index. In mainland China alone, Pop Mart has over 46 million members, consumers who sign up to collect points for purchases, as of December 2024, and even opened Pop Land, an amusement park spanning 40,000 square meters in Beijing, in September 2023.But it’s outside China where Pop Mart is really taking off. Over 130 of the company’s more than 530 stores worldwide as well as over 190 of more than 2,490 roboshops, as of December 2024, are located outside mainland China, and its non-mainland revenue grew by 375% to 5 billion yuan (about $700 million) in 2024, accounting for nearly 40% of its approximately $1.8 billion total revenue, according to the company’s 2024 annual report, which was released on Wednesday.Some might say Pop Mart is riding a wave. One could argue, however, that it is making the wave. While the rest of China’s economy slowed and youth unemployment spiked last year, its guzi—goods, specifically character-based merchandise and collectible toys—market continued to soar, with Pop Mart leading the way. China’s designer toy industry is projected to reach more than 110 billion yuan, or US$15 billion, in retail sales in 2026—more than 1500% increase from 2015, when retail sales were just US$890 million. Worldwide, the toy and figurine market is projected to reach a market value of $49 billion by 2034, up from $26 billion last year.“I go Pop Mart everywhere,” Lisa, the mega famous Thai actress-singer and member of K-pop group Blackpink, told Vanity Fair in a “my secret obsession” video in November. “If I fly to New York, I go to Miami, I try to find Pop Mart there, Paris, you know, everywhere. Kind of like a treasure, finding treasure.”overseas to open together. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Archaeologists in Spain have discovered what might be the oldest known rock cravings made by humans over 200,000 years ago. The latest uncovering could transform entire understanding of human history in Europe. The researchers reported the finding of an 'X' shaped graphic design on a stone bloack during an excavation which took place at the Coto Correa site in Las Chapas district, Marbella.A number of stone tools have previously been discovered in and around the site including some of the oldest found in Europe, dating back to the early Paleolithic era. Excavations in the reigon which followed have uncovered more early human stone tools which has aided in dating the site, including a huge block of stone discovered in 2022. The simple line cravings featured on the stone block confirm the presence of occupancy of settles in southern Spain during the Early Middle Paleolithic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The United Nations has announced that it will be reducing the size of its international team on the ground in Gaza after renewed attacks on the Palestinian territory by Israeli forces killed hundreds of civilians, including UN personnel.UN spokesperson Stephan Dujarric said in a news briefing on Monday that approximately 30 of the UN’s 100 or so international staff would leave Gaza this week, admitting that the withdrawal comes at a time when humanitarian needs have soared and “concern over the protection of civilians intensifies”. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The move was a significant shift toward leaders of the Haqqani network, which was behind some of the deadliest attacks during the war in Afghanistan. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The UK Health Security Agency ( UKHSA ) advise that bird flu is primarily a disease of birds and the risk to the general public's health is very low. The Food Standards Agency ( FSA ) has said bird flu poses a very low food safety risk for UK consumers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two aircraft from the French display team Patrouille de France have crashed in rehearsals.The three pilots of the two Alpha Jets ejected and were "found alive and conscious", the French air force has announced.The two aircraft were taking part in rehearsals not far from the Air Base 113 in Saint-Dizier. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A cargo ship that smashed into a US military chartered oil tanker off the northeast coast of England on Monday was carrying sodium cyanide, according to the maritime intelligence company and shipping journal Lloyd’s List.The collision sparked a huge fire, a dramatic rescue effort and fears of environmental damage.Just before 10 a.m. local time (6 a.m. ET), a Portuguese-flagged container ship called the Solong careered into the oil tanker, called the Stena Immaculate, which was at anchor in the North Sea about 10 miles off the English coastline, according to the ship tracking tool VesselFinder. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The former wife shared shocking details about her challenging period and how she came to terms with her with the end of her marriage to Arnold in her upcoming book, I Am Maria.Maria, who shares four children with Arnold, wrote in an expert of her book, per People, that the “end of their marriage came as a devastating, life-altering blow after the deaths of her parents, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver”.“My twenty-five-year-long marriage blew up,” said the 69-year-old.Maria mentioned, “It broke my heart, it broke my spirit, it broke what was left of me. Without my marriage, my parents, a job—the dam of my lifelong capital-D Denial just blew apart.”For the unversed, Arnold confessed to fathering a child Joseph Baena, with household staffer Mildred Patty" Baena.Maria revealed in her book, “I was consumed with grief and wracked with confusion, anger, fear, sadness, and anxiety.”“I was unsure now of who I was, where I belonged. Honestly, it was brutal, and I was terrified,” she noted. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a naval ceasefire in the Black Sea in separate deals with the US, after three days of peace talks in Saudi Arabia.Washington said all parties would continue working toward a "durable and lasting peace" in statements announcing the agreements, which would reopen an important trade route.They have also committed to "develop measures" to implement a previously agreed ban on attacking each other's energy infrastructure, the White House said.But Russia said the naval ceasefire would only come into force after a number of sanctions against its food and fertiliser trade were lifted. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Exonerated prisoner awarded $1.4m after 46 years spent on death row in JapanIwao Hakamada, the world’s longest serving death row prisoner, had been wrongly convicted of a quadruple murderA Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded $1.4m in compensation, an official has said.The payout represents 12,500 yen ($83) for each day of the 46 years that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last.The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated in 2024 of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

NASA website axes a DEI pledge for the next moon landing In deference to President Trump's anti-DEI order, the space agency has removed a promise to send the "the first woman, first person of color" to walk on the moon aboard the Artemis III mission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Britain's biggest road scheme has been given the green light by the government - 16 years after work on the £9bn crossing began.The Planning Inspectorate said the Lower Thames Crossing (LTC) - a 14.5-mile project stretching from Kent to Essex - was approved by Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander on Tuesday. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The King and Queen's state visit to the Vatican has been postponed because the Pope needs an “extended period of rest and recuperation”, Buckingham Palace has announced. Charles and Camilla were due to visit Pope Francis in the Holy See in just under two weeks' time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The National Security Agency sent out an operational security special bulletin to its employees in February 2025 warning them of vulnerabilities in using the encrypted messaging application Signal, according to internal NSA documents obtained by CBS News. News of the NSA bulletin comes amid the continued fallout from an explosive article published Monday in The Atlantic. The publication's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, detailed how Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth inadvertently disclosed war plans to him in an encrypted Signal chat group two hours before the U.S. military launched attacks against Houthi militia in Yemen. Goldberg wrote that Hegseth's messages included "precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing."The NSA is an arm of the Defense Department and specializes in signals intelligence — which is derived from electronic transmissions — and cybersecurity. The agency is responsible for monitoring, collecting and processing information and data for U.S. national security interests.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

President suggests no punishment for security officials over blunder that saw Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg added to highly-sensitive Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One of the lions was unable to stand because of severe concussion caused by shell shock during the conflict - while another was rescued from a flat where she was being kept as a family pet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jeffery Goldberg, the top editor of The Atlantic, said he could be open to sharing more details from a Signal group chat he was mistakenly added to by top U.S. officials that contained secret war plans.“I get the defensive reaction,” Goldberg said Tuesday during an interview with The Bulwark. “But my obligation, I feel, is to the idea that we take national security information seriously.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chad has condemned a senior Sudanese general's threat to target its airports, calling it a "declaration of war."Its foreign ministry said it would respond according to international law if a "square metre of Chadian territory is threatened".The warning follows comments from Lt-Gen Yasir al-Atta, the deputy commander of Sudan's army, who said the UAE was using Chad's airports to deliver weapons to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).The Sudanese army has repeatedly accused the UAE of supporting its rival, the RSF, throughout the brutal two-year civil war, which has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced that it has deactivated more than 200,000 credit cards linked to more than a dozen federal agencies following an audit showing they were unused or unneeded.The announcement comes as the Elon Musk-led agency continues to root out waste, fraud and corruption in the federal government."Weekly Credit Card Update! Pilot program with 16 agencies to audit unused/unneeded credit cards," DOGE wrote on its X account. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Nordic country wrote on its website that transgender people should contact the U.S. Embassy before traveling to the United States. “When applying for an ESTA or visa to the United States, there are two gender designations to choose from: male or female,” the Danish travel advisory stated in an update Friday. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two ex-police officers have been arrested in Mexico for alleged links to a suspected drug cartel training ground where bones, shoes and clothing were found earlier this month, authorities said Sunday.The discovery of human remains at what Human Rights Watch has called an "apparent mass killing site" has caused shock in a country where murders and kidnappings are daily occurrences.One of the former officers is accused of kidnapping a man who was held at the Izaguirre Ranch in Teuchitlan in the western state of Jalisco, the state attorney general's office said in a statement.The former agent and colleagues detained the victim for a supposed search as he was riding a motorbike, before handing him over to a group who took him to the site, it said. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Avoid traveling alone, especially after dark. Be conscious of your surroundings and avoid areas you believe may put your personal safety at risk. Use only authorized taxis/shuttles. Passengers have been robbed or kidnapped when using taxis. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

George Foreman, boxing legend and entrepreneur, dies at 76. George Foreman, the former heavyweight boxing champion turned business entrepreneur who was part of some of the sport's most memorable matches and moments, died Friday at the age of 76, his family announced. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Google says it uncovered thousands of illegitimate listings, including for fake businesses, on Google Maps and has announced a lawsuit against the alleged scammers behind the fraud.The lawsuit, announced Wednesday, claims a man working within a wider network, created and sold fake business profiles on Google Maps. An initial alert came from a Texas business that flagged an unlicensed locksmith impersonating them on Google Maps. That was just the tip of the iceberg.The claim sparked an investigation that led Google to uncover and eliminate more than 10,000 illegitimate listings, the company said. The scams ranged from outright fake businesses to legitimate accounts that had been hacked or hijacked. "Once we're alerted to the actual fraud, we take extreme efforts to identify similar fraudulent listings," Halimah DeLaine Prado, Google's general counsel, said on "CBS Mornings Plus" Wednesday. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Less than two years after going on strike partly over the encroachment of AI in the entertainment industry, hundreds of actors, writers, directors, musicians, and other creative professionals have signed an open letter urging the White House to push back on AI companies trying to gobble up their copyrighted work. “We firmly believe that America’s global AI leadership must not come at the expense of our essential creative industries,” the letter reads in part, per Deadline. The document goes on to claim that the entertainment industry supports “2.3M American jobs with over $229Bn in wages annually,” but “AI companies are asking to undermine this economic and cultural strength by weakening copyright protections for the films, television series, artworks, writing, music, and voices used to train AI models at the core of multi-billion dollar corporate valuations.”The letter’s 400-plus signatories include hundreds of household names, such as Paul McCartney, Guillermo del Toro, Ava DuVernay, Cate Blanchett, Alfonso Cuaron, Aubrey Plaza, Lilly Wachowski, Ben Stiller, Damon Lindelof, Lily Gladstone, Bette Midler, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ayo Edebiri, Taika Waititi, Cynthia Erivo, Mark Ruffalo, Natasha Lyonne, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Adam Scott, Paul Simon, and more. The correspondence, addressed to the White House Office of Science and Technology, began circulating this weekend. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It was an invitation from a classmate 15 years ago that changed the life of Badar Khan Suri, an Indian scholar now facing deportation from the US over accusations he is linked to a Hamas member.On that summer evening, Mr Suri had been sitting outside his department at Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia university when a classmate announced that an international aid convoy was set to go to Gaza - the Palestinian territory run by the armed Islamist group Hamas and under blockade by Israel.To students of conflict studies, the caravan - of more than 150 people from several Asian countries - offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness one of the world's most contentious disputes up close. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Strait of Hormuz: Tensions rise between Iran and... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.