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The Latest: Trump attends G7 summit amid his trade war with US allies

The Latest: Trump attends G7 summit amid his trade war with US allies

Washington Post16-06-2025
President Donald Trump has arrived for the G7, or Group of Seven , summit in Canada, a country he's suggested should be annexed, as he wages a trade war with America's longstanding allies.
If there's a shared mission at this year's G7 summit, which begins Monday in the Rocky Mountains, it's a desire to minimize any fireworks at a moment of combustible tensions.
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France recognizing a Palestinian state is a bold move by Macron, with a hint of desperation
France recognizing a Palestinian state is a bold move by Macron, with a hint of desperation

CNN

time22 minutes ago

  • CNN

France recognizing a Palestinian state is a bold move by Macron, with a hint of desperation

The Middle East Israel-Hamas warFacebookTweetLink Follow With a single post, French President Emmanuel Macron changed everything, and nothing at all. His late-evening announcement on X that France will recognize a Palestinian state in September, the first member of the United Nations Security Council and the G7 nations to do so, took many by surprise. Although France's recognition has been expected for several months now – indeed the brief Israel-Iran war forced a postponement of the summit on Israel-Palestine with Saudi Arabia and European allies that Paris had been shepherding – it was not expected to land like this. The surprise announcement tells us two things. Firstly, that Emmanuel Macron feels this is the time to act. Leaders from France, the UK and Germany are due to speak Friday to seek urgent action over the new lows of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. More than a thousand Gazans have been killed desperately seeking food since May, dozens more from starvation itself. Images of skeletal, starving Gazans, including children, have harked back to the darkest corners of the twentieth century, stirring Western revulsion – if not yet concrete action – toward the humanitarian crisis. Macron's decision is a bold one – following a smattering of European allies: Ireland, Norway and Spain – but leading the way for major international powers to follow suit. 'I've had other colleagues on the phone and I'm sure that we won't be the only ones recognizing Palestine in September,' a senior official in the French presidency told CNN Thursday following Macron's announcement. Eyes will now likely turn to the UK, perhaps Germany too. The prospect of the United States, Israel's closest ally even without a Trump presidency, seems impossible. But for those on the ground, the French decision will likely change little. The move was welcomed by Hamas as a 'positive step.' For Israeli leaders, it didn't go down well at all. Recognition 'rewards terror' said Israeli Prime Minister (and long-time opponent of a Palestinian state) Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday night, with other ministers arguing the move now justifies the official annexation of the West Bank – Judea and Samaria in the parlance of the Israeli far-right. Even if international recognition could magically mete out concrete change for Gaza, the September deadline will come far too late for Palestinians starving to death under the Israeli-controlled blockade of food. Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, the main United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, said Thursday that people in Gaza resembled 'walking corpses' as starvation took hold. All 2.1 million people in Gaza are now food insecure and on Tuesday, Gaza's health ministry said 900,000 children are going hungry. Some 70,000 children already show signs of malnutrition, they said. France's solo announcement also suggests a hint of desperation on Macron's part. He's a man who likes a coalition on the world stage – strength in numbers is usually a winning strategy. A month ago, the stage appeared set for France to recognize Palestine – a summit co-hosted with Saudi Arabia was planned in Riyadh from June 17 to 20. But when open conflict broke out between Israel and Iran on June 13, that plan was torn apart. The expectation among experts was that France and Saudi Arabia would marshal other allies into a joint recognition – a strong signal to Jerusalem and Washington D.C. on the importance of the two-state solution and peace. Macron may still have his win in September if allies join France's recognition but it won't have been without risking France's diplomatic capital and cajoling more reluctant partners. 'The idea is to put a bit of pressure on other countries,' the senior French official told CNN. And Macron's decision holds weight. European nations have proved stubbornly reluctant to formally act upon a two-state solution and recognize Palestinian statehood. Respect for the West's ally Israel, distaste for the Islamist government in Gaza and the shortcomings of the West Bank's Palestinian Authority, and an apparently acceptable decades-long status quo saw muted outrage at Israeli settlements and attacks on Palestinians, with little shift in international action. France is now breaking that glass ceiling. Within France, a country that has long held a sympathetic position toward the Palestinian cause, recognizing Palestinian statehood won't be a controversial move. Post-WWII leader Charles de Gaulle famously rallied France to the Palestinian people following the 1967 war, with Paris engaging with the Palestinian Liberation Organization for decades, even as terror attacks were committed in the group's name on French soil. In 2014, the French parliament called on the government to recognize Palestine, an appeal that the government backed at the United Nations Security Council in an unsuccessful vote to bring about Palestinian statehood by 2017. France has long backed a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine based on the 1967 borders, although the Elysee source said that the French recognition would not specify the borders. Macron staunchly backed Israel's retaliation for the October 7 massacres but over time has hardened his criticism of Netanyahu and Israel's conduct of the war. Publicly, he worried about about 'importing' the conflict into France, home to Europe's largest community of Jews and Muslims. But as casualties in Gaza mounted, France banned arms exports to Israel, orchestrated aid drops into the territory and repeatedly called for a ceasefire and access of humanitarian aid and journalists. In taking this leap of faith, recognizing a Palestinian state ahead of France's peers, the Elysee Palace is surely hoping for a domino effect of recognition across the West. With aid still cruelly beyond the reach of ordinary Gazans, perhaps it's a last ditch effort to bring some relief.

Trump's AI Orders, Gixel's AR Optics, Big Tech Spends On Nvidia
Trump's AI Orders, Gixel's AR Optics, Big Tech Spends On Nvidia

Forbes

timean hour ago

  • Forbes

Trump's AI Orders, Gixel's AR Optics, Big Tech Spends On Nvidia

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 23: U.S. President Donald Trump displays a signed executive order at an AI ... More summit hosted by All‑In Podcast and Hill & Valley Forum at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium on July 23, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump signed executive orders related to his AI "Action Plan" intended to promote U.S. dominance of the technology during the event. (Photo by) Trump signs sweeping 'AI Action Plan' and 'anti‑woke' order. The plan emphasises 'beating China' and loosening regulations so data centres and chip factories can be built more quickly. Trump also signed an 'anti‑woke' executive order that bars AI vendors from receiving federal contracts if their models include diversity or equity‑related content. Yikes. AI is the new history book, the new Wikipedia. Imagine if all our content came from the same oracle. To paraphrase George Orwell: he who controls AI, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future. TOPSHOT - US President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room flanked by Masayoshi Son (2R), ... More Chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp, Larry Ellison (2L), Executive Charmain Oracle and Sam Altman (R), CEO of Open AI at the White House on January 21, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP) (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images) OpenAI and Oracle scale back the $500 billion Stargate project from 30 GW to 4.5 GW. Then Software bailed and now they're only going to generate 4.4 gigawatts. That's 85% smaller. They're going to open one data center. There's not going to be a big press conference with the president and cover stories about this. Even so, the new facilities will use more than two million chips (wire that money directly to Nvidia). There was a lot of speculation in the ancient days of January, 2025 that this was not a real deal. It only took six months to unravel. WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 23: Jensen Huang, Co-Founder and CEO, NVIDIA speaks onstage at the All-In and ... More Hill & Valley Forum "Winning The AI Race" at Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium on July 23, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo byfor Hill & Valley Forum) xAI seeks up to $12 billion in debt to buy Nvidia chips Elon Musk's AI company xAI is working with Valor Equity Partners to raise as much as $12 billion in debt to acquire Nvidia GB200 and GB300 chips for training Grok. According to the Wall Street Journal, lenders want repayment within three years and may cap borrowing to limit risk. Musk said xAI is building multiple superclusters using more than 230,000 GPUs and will soon launch another with 550,000 chips. Nvidia is going to get a significant chunk of that ten billion. This image makes the basic principles very clear. Gixel Emerges from stealth with €5 million seed round led by Brendan Iribe. Their design for AR glasses uses curved lenses, enabling a slim, lightweight form factor suitable for everyday wear. The optics engine delivers variable focal planes, allowing virtual objects to appear at correct depths and fostering natural eye focus dynamics. Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Karlsruhe, Germany, Gixel closed an oversubscribed €5 million seed round, led by Oculus VR co‑founder Brendan Iribe and backed by former 20th Century Fox/RED futurist Ted Schilowitz, the FlixBus founders (Jochen Engert, Daniel Kraus, André Schwämmlein), Germany's federal innovation agency SPRIND, and early‑stage VC firm LEA Partners. The funds will support the industrialization of Gixel's curved‑lens optical engine, development of developer kits, and groundwork for a Series A round in the coming year. Deep fake hoax false and ai manipulation social media on display. Searching on tablet, pad, phone or ... More smartphone screen in hand. Abstract concept of news titles 3d illustration. UC Riverside researchers, in collaboration with Google scientists, have developed an AI model capable of detecting deepfakes. Unlike earlier detectors, their new UNITE software identifies inconsistencies in backgrounds, motion patterns, and subtle visual artifacts. Built on a transformer architecture and leveraging a novel 'attention-diversity loss,' it avoids focusing solely on faces by spreading attention across multiple regions. While still in development, it holds promise for integration into social media, fact-checking, and newsroom workflows, helping curb the spread of sophisticated video misinformation and AI slop in general. Adobe Firefly is about to make its biggest leap in AI video yet with a new model and Veo 3 integration Adobe has just released Firefly Video Model 1.9, a major upgrade that significantly boosts realism and storytelling in AI-generated videos, available now via its Web App. This update enables creators to produce more dynamic natural and urban environments, including detailed animal motion, weather effects, and 2D/3D animation. Firefly also now supports Veo 3, Luma, Runway, and Topaz integrations. Notably, the beta 'Generate Sound Effects' feature lets users craft custom audio via text prompts or voice input. The model also introduces new controls: reference-video input for composition transfer, style presets (like claymation and anime), and keyframe cropping tools. LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - MAY 01: Co-founder and CEO of Runway Cristobal Valenzuela and ... More artist/musician Claire L. Evans speak on stage during the 2024 AI Film Festival Los Angeles Panel at The Orpheum Theatre on May 01, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by) Disney and Netflix are Quietly Using Runway's AI Video Generators. If you recall, Runway is the AI start up that's raised $450 Million and was valued at $3B. They already have a deal with Lionsgate. Netflix has already used Runway's tools to produce a VFX scene in its sci‑fi series The Eternaut, highlighting savings in both time and cost. While Disney is reportedly testing the same technology, neither company has issued formal announcements. Animal Company becomes one of the highest‑grossing Meta Quest games. The social VR game where players use Gorilla Tag‑like locomotion with their arms in a horror‑mystery setting, is a bona-fide bestseller with more than 500,000 daily active users and about one billion views on TikTok. Its average daily playtime is 100 minutes and 45 percent of users return after 28 days. Since monetization began in April, paying users have increased ninefold. This column is also a podcast hosted by its author, Charlie Fink, Ted Schilowitz, former studio executive, and founding Red Camera executive, and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap. This week our guest is Bilawal Sidhu, Ex-Google PM (XR, maps) and now leading creative voice at the intersection of Generative of AI and media. We can be found on Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube. What We're Reading RP1 says that metaverse needs its own browser (Dean Takahashi/GamesBeat)

US-Japan Trade Deal Hinges on Fund That Remains a Puzzle
US-Japan Trade Deal Hinges on Fund That Remains a Puzzle

Bloomberg

timean hour ago

  • Bloomberg

US-Japan Trade Deal Hinges on Fund That Remains a Puzzle

The US and Japan this week reached what President Donald Trump called the largest trade deal in history after Tokyo pledged to set up a $550 billion fund for investment into the US, details of which remain obscure. The lack of clarity about how the fund will work adds to questions about the viability of the agreement, which imposes 15% tariffs on Japanese cars and other goods. While the start date and other basic elements are still unknown, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned this week that the US would monitor implementation and bump the rate up to 25% if Trump isn't satisfied.

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