U.S. seeks limited trade deal with E.U. as Trump's deadline approaches
The prospective accord, which would spare European goods the 50 percent tariffs that Trump has threatened to impose, is one of a relative handful of deals the administration is set to finalize by Wednesday.
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Bloomberg
19 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Sri Lanka to Continue Talks as US Tariff Cut Seen a ‘Good Start'
Sri Lanka expects to continue negotiations with the US after President Donald Trump's decision to reduce tariffs on the island nation is seen as a 'good start' by Colombo which had primarily negotiated to preserve its competitive advantage, Treasury Secretary Harshana Suriyapperuma said Thursday. US President Donald Trump imposed a 30% levy on goods from Sri Lanka after the July 9 deadline passed without a deal in place. The new tariff is lower than the earlier 44% imposed on Sri Lanka, and also below the 35% and 36% levied on countries like Bangladesh and Cambodia respectively which compete to ship a similar basket of goods.
CNET
29 minutes ago
- CNET
Anti-Prime Day Laptop Deal: My Go-to Acer Aspire 14 AI Laptop Is $200 Off at Costco Today
The Amazon Prime Day sales event is going strong, but other retailers are also offering deep discounts with their own Anti-Prime Day deals. Right now, Costco members can snag the Acer Aspire 14 AI for $500a $200 discount until July 20 or while supplies last. CNET's key takeaways The Acer Aspire 14 AI is available for $500 at Costco. The Intel Lunar Lake CPU offers good performance for the price and long battery life. The display and design won't wow you. Laptop prices are on the rise -- and the more they increase, the better Acer's Aspire 14 AI looks. When I reviewed it in April, it cost $700 at Costco and was the cheapest Copilot Plus PC I had reviewed. Fast forward two months and it's now $500 at Costco, making it the the cheapest Copilot Plus PC I've seen -- and a great value. Acer cuts the right corners to hit such a low price for the Aspire 14 AI, delivering a well-rounded laptop with modern components. This is no budget laptop with outdated parts. It features the latest Intel Core Ultra Series 2 processor (codenamed Lunar Lake) that serves up competitive application and AI performance along with great battery life and a design that doesn't look all that different from Acer's pricier Swift laptops. The Aspire 14 AI's no-frills, but future-proofed package makes it one of the best budget laptops of 2025. My experience with the Acer Aspire 14 AI I'm still waiting for the killer AI app to make a laptop AI CPU a must but it's nice to know that when it arrives, you'll have a machine that's built for it. Thanks to its Intel Core Ultra 5 CPU that has a neural processing unit capable of 40 trillion operations per second, the Aspire 14 AI hits the minimum requirement for Microsoft's Copilot Plus PC platform. Its AI processor can offload AI workloads -- constantly taking Windows Recall snapshots, blurring backgrounds for video calls and producing live translations -- to its NPU, keeping the CPU and GPU freed up for whatever primary task you're working on. Matt Elliott/CNET Future-proofing is always valuable in any laptop, especially so in a budget model where it's not always a given. You need to be careful when shopping for a low-cost laptop because many offerings are older models with previous-generation components that are discounted in an attempt to clear out inventory for newer units. In testing, the Aspire 14 AI hung with the more expensive Copilot Plus PCs I've tested. Its scores on our application, graphics and AI benchmarks weren't all that far off from those of its pricier competitors. Its integrated Intel GPU doesn't provide much in the way of 3D gaming but the same can be said for any Copilot Plus PC, since I've yet to encounter one with dedicated graphics. With the Aspire 14 AI, you avoid the budget laptop trap of buying a machine with outdated or soon-to-be-outdated parts. And you also skip past the specter of the Creaky Plastic Monster. Many budget laptops have flimsy plastic enclosures, but the Aspire 14 AI has aluminum top and bottom panels with only a plastic keyboard deck. The keyboard deck feels rigid and doesn't bend or flex like the thinner plastic commonly found on other budget models. It's a solidly constructed laptop, and you'd have to look closely to tell it apart from one of Acer's mainstream Swift laptops. The specs CPU: Intel Core Ultra 5 226V Memory: 16GB LPDDR5-8533 Graphics: Intel Arc 130V Storage: 1TB solid-state drive Display: 14-inch 1,920x1,200-pixel touch IPS LCD Ports: 2x USB-C Thunderbolt 4, 2x USB-A USB 3.2 Gen 1, HDMI 2.1, combo audio Networking: Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 Weight: 3.05 pounds Battery life: 18 hours, 56 minutes Operating system: Microsoft Windows 11 Home Best Prime Day Laptops Deals It's never too early to start shopping for an upgrade to your laptop, and our favorite Prime Day laptop deals are guaranteed to save you time and money. Check out the best savings here. See Now CNET'S buying advice The best part of the Aspire 14 AI is getting a modern CPU that delivers the performance needed for the laptop to act as your primary machine and not just a cheap, underpowered second system. And the efficient Intel Core Ultra CPU also allows the Aspire 14 AI to run for almost 19 hours on a single charge while also offering a bit of future-proofing with its AI capabilities. The uninspired design and meh display are really the only items that scream "budget laptop." The rest of the package is more mainstream than budget, including the 16GB of RAM and the roomy 1TB SSD. You are usually looking at 8GB of RAM and either a 256GB or 512GB SSD when shopping for a $700 laptop. If you are willing to spend a bit more, I have a couple of other Copilot Plus PCs you should check out. The Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 is a winner for its slick and sturdy design and awesome haptic touchpad and the Asus Zenbook A14 boasts an ultralight yet rigid enclosure with a gorgeous OLED display. Plus, both offer even better battery life than the Aspire 14 AI.
Yahoo
30 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Elon Musk says his new AI model ‘better than PhD level in everything'
Elon Musk says his xAI company's latest AI model Grok 4 is 'better than PhD level in everything'. Describing the latest model as 'the smartest AI in the world' at its launch, the billionaire SpaceX and Tesla boss said it had received 100 times more training than the Grok 2 version, which was replaced by Grok 3 in February. 'It is remarkable to see how quickly artificial intelligence is evolving,' said Mr Musk, saying the new model would achieve near-perfect results in graduate exams in nearly every subject and expected the first 'watchable half hour' of television produced by AI by the end of the year. 'Grok 4 is smarter than nearly all graduate students in all subjects simultaneously.' Describing the current time as the 'intelligence big bang', he admitted Grok 4 'may lack common sense' but it might create new technology 'as soon as this year'. 'The most important thing for any AI is to be truth-seeking… You can instil the right values to be truthful, honourable and the values you want to instil in a child you hope to grow up to be incredibly powerful,' he said. The announcement comes in the wake of antisemitic commentary from the Grok 3 chatbot, which included praise of Adolf Hitler. On Wednesday, the Grok's X account posted: 'We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts.' Some experts have said Mr Musk has attempted to steer away from other chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, which is considered 'woke'. In June, he invited X users to help train the chatbot with 'divisive facts' which he described as 'things that are politically incorrect, but nonetheless factually true.' On Wednesday, Linda Yaccarino said she was stepping down two years after Mr Musk hired her to run X, formerly Twitter, which he bought for 44 billion dollars (£32.4 billion) in late 2022.
