The courtroom fell eerily silent as the footage of Sean “Diddy” Combs beating, kicking and dragging his then-girlfriend began — a video already seen worldwide but which took on new gravity played before the jurors who will determine his future.Prosecutors played the footage repeatedly throughout their questioning of Israel Florez, a police officer who in 2016 was the security guard during an encounter with Combs that could prove pivotal during the fallen music mogul’s federal racketeering and sex trafficking trial.Combs’s family, including his 18-year-old twin daughters, watched stoically on Monday as prosecutors played the harrowing footage again and again.”She just kept saying she wanted to leave,” Florez said of Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, the singer who was dating Combs at the time and is expected to testify in the trial as early as Tuesday.Visibly tense but intensely alert, Combs watched as the security guard described the artist’s attempts to bribe him with a wad of bills to stay quiet over the incident at a Los Angeles hotel.The immensely wealthy mogul who was a key figure in 1990s and 2000s-era hip hop is accused of running a criminal sex ring that enforced its power with arson, kidnapping, bribery and forced labor.”He sometimes called himself the king,” said prosecutor Emily Johnson during opening statements.”And he expected to be treated like one.”Combs denies all charges, and his defense team says the sex acts were consensual.CNN released the security footage of the hotel encounter involving Combs and Ventura last year, and a number of jurors said during selection they were acquainted with it.But Monday’s testimony included fresh details, like photos of a smashed vase of flowers Florez said he found Ventura huddled next to.Florez said Combs had a “devilish stare” when the security guard arrived to the scene.He added that he offered to call the police but didn’t because Ventura, who he described as having a “purple” eye, insisted multiple times she simply wanted to go.- ‘Just for insurance’ -Florez’s testimony was followed by that of Daniel Phillip, a now 41-year-old who ran a “male revue” show in New York.He said he first met Ventura and Combs in 2012, after he was called to perform at a bachelorette party.He arrived at Manhattan’s Gramercy Hotel expecting to do a quick striptease for a group of partying women, he said.But instead Ventura, wearing red lace lingerie paired with high heels, a red wig and dark sunglasses, answered the door.Thus began Phillip’s relationship with the famous pair, an encounter that began with the dancer giving Ventura a massage with baby oil and ended with sex while a masked Combs watched in the corner.Phillip would routinely receive payment from the couple anywhere from $700 to $6,000, he told jurors.Throughout Phillip’s at times intensely lurid testimony, members of Combs’s family, including his 18-year-old twin daughters, left the room.Phillip said his enthusiasm for the relationship — which involved Combs directing sexual acts and sometimes filming them — waned after the first time he witnessed Combs strike and drag Ventura by the hair.”I was shocked,” Phillip said. “It came out of nowhere. I was terrified.”Phillip said he urged Ventura to get out — but that she insisted she would be alright.After witnessing Combs’s abuse Phillip said he began to find it difficult to perform sexually in front of him.Asked why he didn’t call the police, Phillip said that “this was someone with unlimited power.”Combs had already previously taken a photo of Phillip’s identification card “just for insurance,” the dancer said.”I understood it to be he was threatening me.”Phillip’s testimony will continue Tuesday.

Even the greatest human minds building generative artificial intelligence that is poised to change the world admit they do not comprehend how digital minds think.”People outside the field are often surprised and alarmed to learn that we do not understand how our own AI creations work,” Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei wrote in an essay posted online in April.”This lack of understanding is essentially unprecedented in the history of technology.”Unlike traditional software programs that follow pre-ordained paths of logic dictated by programmers, generative AI (gen AI) models are trained to find their own way to success once prompted.In a recent podcast Chris Olah, who was part of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI before joining Anthropic, described gen AI as “scaffolding” on which circuits grow.Olah is considered an authority in so-called mechanistic interpretability, a method of reverse engineering AI models to figure out how they work.This science, born about a decade ago, seeks to determine exactly how AI gets from a query to an answer.”Grasping the entirety of a large language model is an incredibly ambitious task,” said Neel Nanda, a senior research scientist at the Google DeepMind AI lab. It was “somewhat analogous to trying to fully understand the human brain,” Nanda added to AFP, noting neuroscientists have yet to succeed on that front.Delving into digital minds to understand their inner workings has gone from a little-known field just a few years ago to being a hot area of academic study.”Students are very much attracted to it because they perceive the impact that it can have,” said Boston University computer science professor Mark Crovella.The area of study is also gaining traction due to its potential to make gen AI even more powerful, and because peering into digital brains can be intellectually exciting, the professor added.- Keeping AI honest -Mechanistic interpretability involves studying not just results served up by gen AI but scrutinizing calculations performed while the technology mulls queries, according to Crovella.”You could look into the model…observe the computations that are being performed and try to understand those,” the professor explained.Startup Goodfire uses AI software capable of representing data in the form of reasoning steps to better understand gen AI processing and correct errors.The tool is also intended to prevent gen AI models from being used maliciously or from deciding on their own to deceive humans about what they are up to.”It does feel like a race against time to get there before we implement extremely intelligent AI models into the world with no understanding of how they work,” said Goodfire chief executive Eric Ho.In his essay, Amodei said recent progress has made him optimistic that the key to fully deciphering AI will be found within two years.”I agree that by 2027, we could have interpretability that reliably detects model biases and harmful intentions,” said Auburn University associate professor Anh Nguyen.According to Boston University’s Crovella, researchers can already access representations of every digital neuron in AI brains.”Unlike the human brain, we actually have the equivalent of every neuron instrumented inside these models”, the academic said. “Everything that happens inside the model is fully known to us. It’s a question of discovering the right way to interrogate that.”Harnessing the inner workings of gen AI minds could clear the way for its adoption in areas where tiny errors can have dramatic consequences, like national security, Amodei said.For Nanda, better understanding what gen AI is doing could also catapult human discoveries, much like DeepMind’s chess-playing AI, AlphaZero, revealed entirely new chess moves that none of the grand masters had ever thought about.Properly understood, a gen AI model with a stamp of reliability would grab competitive advantage in the market.Such a breakthrough by a US company would also be a win for the nation in its technology rivalry with China.”Powerful AI will shape humanity’s destiny,” Amodei wrote.”We deserve to understand our own creations before they radically transform our economy, our lives, and our future.”

A high-profile left-wing influencer and political commentator said Monday he was detained for hours by US border officials and interrogated about his political views. US citizen Hasan Piker — who has millions of followers on YouTube, Twitch and X, and been outspoken in his criticism of Israel — says he was held at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport for over two hours on Sunday.He spoke out as the administration of President Donald Trump is facing growing criticism over claims of punitive action taken by federal agents against US citizens and legal residents for merely voicing progressive opinions.Pike said his exchanges with officials were largely cordial but an officer asked his views on Trump and whether he has been in contact with militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.”He’s like, ‘Do you talk about Trump?’ And that was the first time where I was like, ‘What is this question?'” Piker said on a video posted to his YouTube account.”I literally straight up told him. I was like, ‘Why are you asking me this… what does this have to do with anything?'”Piker says he told the official: “I don’t like Trump. Like, what are you going to do? It’s protected by the First Amendment.”The Turkish-American 33-year-old was born in New Jersey, and has hosted US Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on his platform in the past.Department of Homeland Security official Tricia McLaughlin responded Monday denying that Piker’s political beliefs triggered the secondary screening, according to media reports.”Upon entering the country, this individual was referred for further inspection — a routine, lawful process that occurs daily, and can apply for any traveler. Once his inspection was complete, he was promptly released,” McLaughlin told US media.Piker maintains that his online content has never broken the law and only engaged in speech protected by the US Constitution.”The reason for why they’re doing that is, I think, to try to create an environment of fear, to try to get people like myself — or at least like others that would be in my shoes that don’t have that same level of security — to shut… up,” he added. Advocacy group Defending Rights & Dissent said it was “deeply disturbed” by the notion of border officials stopping political commentators to interrogate them about constitutionally-protected speech. “Such an abuse of power is an affront to press freedom,” it said.

The United States and China announced Monday an agreement to drastically reduce tit-for-tat tariffs for 90 days, an outcome President Donald Trump dubbed a “total reset” as he said talks with counterpart Xi Jinping could soon follow.After the first meetings between Washington and Beijing since Trump ratcheted up his trade war, the world’s two biggest economies agreed in a joint statement to bring their triple-digit tariffs down to two figures and continue negotiations.The announcement sent financial markets soaring after weeks of turmoil over tariff fears. Major Wall Street indexes surged, with the broad-based S&P 500 closing 3.3 percent higher.”Yesterday we achieved a total reset with China after productive talks in Geneva,” Trump said. “I’ll speak to President Xi, maybe at the end of the week.”US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described weekend discussions with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and international trade representative Li Chenggang as “productive” and “robust” with both sides anticipated to meet again soon.Trump’s fresh duties on many imports from China came up to 145 percent this year, compared to 10 percent for other countries in a global tariff blitz launched last month.Beijing hit back with duties of 125 percent on US goods.The United States agreed to lower its tariffs on Chinese goods to 30 percent while China will reduce its own to 10 percent.These actions take effect at 12:01 am on Wednesday, according to an executive order released by the White House.The United States also lowered a levy on low-value imports from China that had hit e-commerce sites such as Shein and Temu. Under Trump’s executive order, “de minimis” items sent through the US Postal Service will be hit with duties of 54 percent of their value, or a $100 payment. The prior tariff had been set at 120 percent.Bessent told CNBC Monday that he expects United States and Chinese representatives to meet again in the coming weeks to work out “a more fulsome agreement.”While Washington does not want broad decoupling from China, it seeks “decoupling for strategic necessities,” Bessent said.He added to CNBC that the 90-day pause was also done to see what the United States could do about non-tariff barriers weighing on US firms. China hailed the “substantial progress” made at the talks, held at the discreet villa residence of Switzerland’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.This move “is in the interest of the two countries and the common interest of the world,” the Chinese commerce ministry said, adding that it hoped Washington would keep working with Beijing “to correct the wrong practice of unilateral tariff rises.”With the agreement, China also committed to suspending or removing non-tariff countermeasures.- Fentanyl ‘cooperation’ -The US additional tariff rate remains higher than China’s because it includes a 20 percent levy over Trump’s complaints about Chinese exports of chemicals used to make fentanyl, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told reporters.”Those remain unchanged for now,” he said. But “both the Chinese and United States agreed to work constructively together on fentanyl and there is a positive path forward there as well.”In a joint statement, the two sides agreed to “establish a mechanism to continue discussions about economic and trade relations.””I think we leave with a very good mechanism to avoid the unfortunate escalations,” Bessent said, noting that the tariffs had essentially created a trade “embargo” between the two superpowers.China’s commerce ministry said both parties “will conduct rolling consultations on a regular or ad hoc basis in China, the US or agreed third countries.”- ‘No guarantee’ -A suspension of higher tariffs marks “substantial de-escalation,” said Capital Economics chief Asia economist Mark Williams in a note.But “there is no guarantee that the 90-day truce will give way to a lasting ceasefire,” he warned. Washington appears to be seeking to rally others towards introducing restrictions on trade with China, he said.Nonetheless, the latest development signals negotiations are moving to a more conciliatory phase, according to a Deutsche Bank Research note.Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, believes the outcome of the weekend meeting was a “success” for Beijing.”China took a tough stance on the US threat of high tariffs and eventually managed to get the tariffs down significantly without making concessions,” he said.Trump’s tariffs and high rates targeting China have rocked financial markets, raising fears the levies would rekindle inflation and cause a global economic downturn.The Geneva meeting came days after Trump unveiled a trade agreement with Britain, the first with any country since his new duties on both friend and foe.burs-nl-bys-jmb/dw