Steve Witkoff says denial came during phone call that US president had with Russian president Vladimir Putin on Monday
Hegseth says the aftermath of the conflict is “going to be in America’s interests” and says it “will not live under a nuclear blackmail” from Iran.
It comes shortly after the defence secretary reiterated president Donald Trump’s threat that if Iran does anything to prevent the flow of oil in the strait of Hormuz, it will be hit “twenty times harder”.
Continue reading...Bill is in response to president’s latest push to impose tariffs, but it’s likely to stall in Republican-majority Senate
A new Democrat-led bill seeks to exempt small businesses from Donald Trump’s latest round of tariffs, as small business owners continue to reel from the impacts of the battle over the president’s signature economic policy.
Introduced by the senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, the bill, known as the “Small Business Liberation 2.0 Act”, would exempt goods imported by or for the use of small businesses from new tariffs, which Donald Trump enacted on 20 February, immediately after the US supreme court’s ruling invalidating his “liberation day” tariffs.
Continue reading...OpenAI is reportedly backing away from expanding its AI data center partnership with Oracle because newer generations of Nvidia GPUs may arrive before the facility is even operational. CNBC reports: Artificial intelligence chips are getting upgraded more quickly than data centers can be built, a market reality that exposes a key risk to the AI trade and Oracle's debt-fueled expansion. OpenAI is no longer planning to expand its partnership with Oracle in Abilene, Texas, home to the Stargate data center, because it wants clusters with newer generations of Nvidia graphics processing units, according to a person familiar with the matter. The current Abilene site is expected to use Nvidia's Blackwell processors, and the power isn't projected to come online for a year. By then, OpenAI is hoping to have expanded access to Nvidia's next-generation chips in bigger clusters elsewhere, said the person, who asked not to be named due to confidentiality. In a post on X, Oracle called the reports "false and incorrect." However, it only said existing projects are on track and didn't address expansion plans. CNBC notes: "Oracle secured the site, ordered the hardware, and spent billions of dollars on construction and staff, with the expectation of going bigger."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Some administration officials snipe about having to wear middling footwear instead of their upmarket favorites
Sitting behind the Resolute desk, Donald Trump fixed his gaze on JD Vance’s and Marco Rubio’s feet. “Marco, JD, you guys have s—y shoes,” said the US president, consulting a catalogue and asking their shoe size. Rubio said 11.5 and Vance 13. Trump leaned back in his chair and remarked: “You can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size.”
The story is recounted in a Wall Street Journal newspaper report that tells how officials, advisers and visiting allies are quietly acquiring leather dress shoes courtesy of Trump, who presents them with the enthusiasm of a travelling salesman.
Continue reading...Josh Green, the governor, declared an emergency as the islands face flooding, gusts and thunderstorms this weekend
Hawaii is preparing for a powerful storm this week that is expected to cause intense winds, thunderstorms and possibly significant flooding across multiple islands.
Josh Green, the governor, said on Monday he had issued an emergency proclamation in response to the weather expected to hit his state in the coming days, in order to bring additional resources into effected areas.
Continue reading...Trump’s special envoy says denial came during phone call that US president had with Russian president Vladimir Putin on Monday
Hegseth says the aftermath of the conflict is “going to be in America’s interests” and says it “will not live under a nuclear blackmail” from Iran.
It comes shortly after the defence secretary reiterated president Donald Trump’s threat that if Iran does anything to prevent the flow of oil in the strait of Hormuz, it will be hit “twenty times harder”.
Continue reading...
Car group reports 54% drop in pre-tax profits as it says Iran war could affect demand for Audi and Porsche brands
Europe’s largest automaker, Volkswagen, is to shed 50,000 jobs by the end of the decade, as it faces falling sales in China and North America and punitive US tariffs imposed by Donald Trump.
The 10-brand group, whose luxury subsidiaries Porsche and Audi are also under pressure, said the jobs would go in Germany, affecting the entire group, as part of a restructuring drive in light of the darkening global business climate.
Continue reading...Rand Paul, top Republican on Senate homeland security committee, says he hopes to schedule Mullin’s confirmation hearing for Wednesday 18 March
Hegseth says the aftermath of the conflict is “going to be in America’s interests” and says it “will not live under a nuclear blackmail” from Iran.
It comes shortly after the defence secretary reiterated president Donald Trump’s threat that if Iran does anything to prevent the flow of oil in the strait of Hormuz, it will be hit “twenty times harder”.
Continue reading...Car group reports 54% drop in pre-tax profits as it says Iran war could affect demand for Audi and Porsche brands
Europe’s largest automaker, Volkswagen, is to shed 50,000 jobs by the end of the decade, as it faces falling sales in China and North America and punitive US tariffs imposed by Donald Trump.
The 10-brand group, whose luxury subsidiaries Porsche and Audi are also under pressure, said the jobs would go in Germany, affecting the entire group, as part of a restructuring drive in light of the darkening global business climate.
Continue reading...An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: AI can reverse engineer machine code and find vulnerabilities in ancient legacy architectures, says Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich, who used his own Apple II code from 40 years ago as an example. Russinovich wrote: "We are entering an era of automated, AI-accelerated vulnerability discovery that will be leveraged by both defenders and attackers." In May 1986, Russinovich wrote a utility called Enhancer for the Apple II personal computer. The utility, written in 6502 machine language, added the ability to use a variable or BASIC expression for the destination of a GOTO, GOSUB, or RESTORE command, whereas without modification Applesoft BASIC would only accept a line number. Russinovich had Claude Opus 4.6, released early last month, look over the code. It decompiled the machine language and found several security issues, including a case of "silent incorrect behavior" where, if the destination line was not found, the program would set the pointer to the following line or past the end of the program, instead of reporting an error. The fix would be to check the carry flag, which is set if the line is not found, and branch to an error. The existence of the vulnerability in Apple II type-in code has only amusement value, but the ability of AI to decompile embedded code and find vulnerabilities is a concern. "Billions of legacy microcontrollers exist globally, many likely running fragile or poorly audited firmware like this," said one comment to Russinovich's post.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
With its credibility swaying in the wake of a betting scandal, the very last thing the league needed was to be in business with a prediction platform
The timing of the suspensions was unfortunate. Or perhaps it was karmically inevitable.
Forty-two days after Major League Soccer announced a new partnership with Polymarket – a prediction platform that lets its users bet on just about anything, including whether, when, and where one country will bomb another – a press release went out. A pair of Ghanaian-born former MLS players, Derrick Jones and Yaw Yeboah, had been banned from the league for life for betting on games, including their own.
Leander Schaerlaeckens’ book on the United States men’s national soccer team, The Long Game, is out on 12 May. You can preorder it here. He teaches at Marist University.
Continue reading...