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A former Illinois sheriff’s deputy was convicted of murder on Wednesday for the shooting of a Black woman inside her home, in a case that drew national attention and calls for police reform.Sean Grayson, 31, who is white, was found guilty of second-degree murder by a jury after two days of deliberations.Grayson was charged with first-degree murder and second-degree murder for the July 2024 shooting of Sonya Massey, 36, a mother of two, and the jury opted to convict him only of the lesser charge.Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who has been representing the Massey family, expressed disappointment that Grayson was not convicted of first-degree murder but said the “verdict is still a measure of justice for Sonya Massey.””Accountability has begun, and we now hope the court will impose a meaningful sentence that reflects the severity of these crimes and the life that was lost,” Crump said in a statement.First-degree murder carries a potential life sentence while punishment for second-degree murder is up to 20 years in prison.Massey’s shooting drew attention to police violence against African-Americans and prompted then-US president Joe Biden to say she “should be alive today.”Massey, who had received treatment in the past for mental health issues, had called the 911 emergency line to report a possible intruder in her home. Two Sangamon County sheriff’s deputies arrived shortly after midnight.Police body camera footage showed Massey talking to the officers and searching through her purse after they asked her for identification.Grayson then asked her to check on a pot of boiling water on the stove, saying “we don’t need a fire while we’re here.”When Grayson stepped back into the living room, Massey asked why, and he responded with a laugh: “Away from your hot steaming water.”Holding the pot, Massey responded “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus” — prompting the deputy to draw his weapon and say: “You better fucking not. I swear to God I’ll fucking shoot you in your fucking face.”Apologizing, Massey crouched behind a counter as the officer screamed “drop the fucking pot” and fired three shots, killing Massey with a bullet to the face.Grayson took the stand during his one-week trial and testified that he had felt threatened by the pot of boiling water Massey was holding.The Sangamon County Board approved a $10 million settlement with Massey’s estate earlier this year.The United States was rocked by protests in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minnesota.Floyd’s death revived scrutiny of race relations and sparked nationwide calls for police reform.

Uber said Wednesday it will launch its own robotaxi service in San Francisco late next year, taking on Google-owned Waymo on the rideshare giant’s home streets.The announcement came a day after Uber and Nvidia touted an alliance to deploy 100,000 robotaxis starting in 2027.”The future is on its way,” Uber said in the post on X, adding that on-road development of more than 100 self-driving Lucid vehicles for the robotaxi program is in progress.Uber currently lets users in a few US cities hail robotaxis operated by Waymo.Nvidia earlier this week announced it was working with carmakers Stellantis, Lucid, and Mercedes-Benz to deploy 100,000 robotaxis starting in 2027, as the AI chip giant works to put itself at the core of self-driving vehicle systems.Artificial intelligence, along with super-fast, reliable internet connectivity, promises to be essential for cars to react safely and smartly on the road.Waymo robotaxis have grown in popularity in San Francisco, and even become a tourist attraction, since the service began testing here in 2021 and opened to the general public last year.Waymo’s fleet in the area is estimated at more than 800 vehicles and the company recently announced plans to launch its robotaxis in London next year.London would mark the first foray into Europe for Waymo, already present in a growing number of US cities.Chinese internet giant Baidu earlier this year announced plans to launch robotaxis on the rideshare app Lyft in Germany and Britain in 2026, pending regulatory approval.Baidu has announced a similar agreement with Uber in Asia and the Middle East as it seeks to take pole position in the competitive autonomous driving field both at home and abroad.

A US judge jailed two men for 25 years each Wednesday for a plot allegedly hatched by Tehran to kill Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, her team confirmed to AFP.Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, both members of an eastern European criminal gang, orchestrated a failed plot to assassinate campaigning reporter Alinejad.”They wanted to see me dead on my porch in Brooklyn and thanks to the law enforcement agencies, I am alive and Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader (of Iran), is humiliated,” Alinejad said outside a Manhattan courthouse following the sentencing, brandishing a sunflower.”I was nervous but at the same time very empowered to speak the truth,” she added before dancing and singing in Farsi.Amirov and Omarov were both jailed for 25 years, a spokesman for Alinejad said following the hearing, after prosecutors had sought 55-year terms for each, according to court filings.According to the Justice Department, the jailed men, members of the eastern European crime network, were “contracted” by Ruhollah Bazghandi — identified as a brigadier general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards — and other members of his network to murder Alinejad.In July 2022, a man hired to carry out the assassination was arrested near Alinejad’s New York home with a loaded AK-47 assault rifle, the court heard over the two week trial.The 49-year-old Alinejad, one of the most prominent dissident campaigners against Iranian authorities, for years has pushed for the abolition of the obligatory headscarf in Iran under the banner of “MyStealthyFreedom.”She left Iran in 2009.Charges were unsealed in October 2024 against Bazghandi, a former intelligence officer.Three other Iranians with “connections to the government of Iran” — Haj Taher, Hossein Sedighi and Seyed Mohammad Forouzan — were indicted over the affair.The three are not in US custody and are believed to be in Iran. They face charges of conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire and money laundering.Tehran has routinely rejected similar US accusations about alleged plots to kill American officials or politicians in the past.The United States has also accused Iran of seeking to assassinate US officials in retaliation for Washington’s killing of Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani in 2020.The State Department previously announced a $20 million reward for information leading to the arrest of the alleged Iranian mastermind behind a plot to assassinate former White House official John Bolton.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said Wednesday that his country has advanced to “text-based” negotiations with Washington towards securing a better tariff deal — and hoped one would materialise “soon”.The South African government has been seeking to negotiate a better tariff deal with the United States, after US President Donald Trump’s administration hit the country with a 30-percent import tax in August — the highest rate in sub-Saharan Africa.Speaking at a press conference in the Swiss capital Bern, Ramaphosa said the negotiations with Washington were “ongoing”.”They are now fortunately based on text. And once you get to that level, with any government you are said to have made tremendous progress,” he told reporters.”We are looking forward to concluding an agreement fairly soon.”He stressed though that “timeframes when you deal with governments are always things that shift, and so … soon could be tomorrow; next week; next month”. Ramaphosa was speaking during a state visit to Switzerland, which is itself striving to negotiate a better tariff deal with Washington than the 39 percent it has been hit with.- ‘Opportunity opener’ -Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter sounded less optimistic than her South African counterpart when asked how those talks were going.The Swiss economic affairs ministry “is following up on talks with the US authorities”, she said.”But in the end, the president of the United States will decide upon the result, and this is why we might need some patience here.”Ramaphosa, whose delegation signed five memorandums of understanding with Switzerland on issues including economic cooperation, suggested that the tariff crunch had an upside.”What this tariff imposition has done is to make us want to diversify our trade reach, and we as South Africa have been looking at spreading our trade wings more effectively to other markets,” he said.With bilateral trade in goods worth 3.6 billion Swiss francs ($4.5 billion) in 2024, South Africa is Switzerland’s second-largest trading partner on the continent.Switzerland meanwhile regularly ranks among the 10 largest foreign investors in South Africa.Ramaphosa said he expected “we will be able to raise the trade dealings with Switzerland to a higher level”.”In many ways, whilst imposition of tariffs is quite negative… it also opens up opportunities,” he said.”We should look at it as an opportunity opener.”

Billionaire media and telecoms tycoon John Malone will step down as chairman of his multinational companies Liberty Global and Liberty Media after decades influencing the global communications landscape, the businesses announced Wednesday.The 84-year-old American, nicknamed the “Cable Cowboy,” is recognized as a pioneering force in the cable television industry who helped shape the trajectory of modern media through his aggressive dealmaking across the globe.Often compared to Rupert Murdoch or Ted Turner, Malone is renowned for highly-leveraged acquisitions and for implementing complex deal-making to consolidate media assets.Malone, who is also one of the biggest landowners in the United States, reached the height of global media business when he sold his vast TCI cable group to AT&T in 1999 in a $48 billion deal.He praised Liberty Global’s performance during his chairmanship, citing investments in cable and broadband across 50 countries and more than $200 billion in mergers and acquisitions.”The return to long-term shareholders has been outstanding — and getting there has been, like the industry itself, never dull and a lot of fun,” Malone said in a company statement.He will also step down as chairman at Liberty Media, which operates Formula 1 racing, MotoGP, and Live Nation entertainment.Malone controls approximately 49.5 percent of the voting power in the Formula 1 division through his shareholdings.Over the years, Malone through Liberty Media has had major stakes in companies like Warner Brothers Discovery, Lionsgate, QVC, SiriusXM, and the Atlanta Braves baseball team.”Founding Liberty Media and serving as its chairman has been among the most rewarding experiences of my professional life,” Malone said.Malone will remain as a large shareholder and strategic advisor to both companies while reducing his formal board commitments.

The United States said Wednesday it will pull out some troops from NATO’s eastern flank but denied the move amounted to an American withdrawal from Europe, as analysts warned it could embolden Russia. Officials were quick to downplay the reduction in personnel, which comes amid a review of US military deployments worldwide that has worried European allies concerned about President Donald Trump’s commitment to the continent.”This is not an American withdrawal from Europe or a signal of lessened commitment to NATO and Article 5,” the US Army in Europe and Africa, said in a statement, referring to the alliance’s collective defence principle. Trump has repeatedly criticised NATO and insisted that Europe boosts military spending and takes more responsibility for its defence as Ukraine battles Russia’s invasion.The Pentagon says there are nearly 85,000 US military personnel in Europe — a number that has fluctuated between 75,000 and 105,000 since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.- ‘Resizing’ – The US military said Wednesday an infantry brigade combat team and an airborne division were to redeploy to their Kentucky home base without replacement.It was not immediately clear how many troops were concerned. A brigade usually numbers up to 5,000 soldiers.”This force posture adjustment will not change the security environment in Europe,” the US army said. Reports earlier this year said Washington could withdraw 10,000 troops from eastern Europe as it shifts focus towards the Indo-Pacific region, which the Pentagon called its “priority theatre”.Romania’s defence ministry, which previewed the pullout beating Washington to an official announcement Wednesday, said the “resizing” was the result of new US priorities and a strengthened NATO presence on the eastern flank.It would affect a brigade with elements in several NATO countries, including Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary, Bucharest added. A NATO official told AFP the alliance had been informed by the Trump administration in advance, describing the US move as nothing “unusual”.”Even with this adjustment, the US force posture in Europe remains larger than it has been for many years, with many more US forces on the continent than before 2022,” the official said.Washington’s commitment to NATO remained “clear”, the official added.- ‘Wrong signal’ -Romania’s Defence Minister Ionut Mosteanu said 900-1,000 US soldiers would remain in the country to help “deter any threat”.  According to the latest government figures, about 1,700 US troops are currently deployed in the Black Sea nation, which borders war-torn Ukraine.But experts such as George Scutaru, co-founder of the New Strategy Center, a Romanian think tank, warned that while not significantly affecting the military balance, the move sent the “wrong signal”.”Russia will consider that Black Sea is not so important for American interests in Europe,” he told AFP. Moscow could be encouraged to pile pressure on Romania by, for example, violating its airspace with drones and other aircraft, he said.Germany, home to the largest contingent of American troops in Europe, said it was not affected by the redeployment.Poland’s Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz also said the country had “not received any information… about a reduction in the contingent in Poland”.Romania’s Mosteanu insisted strategic capabilities were “unchanged”. He added that a missile-defence system at the Deveselu NATO base “remains fully operational”.”The Campia Turzii air base continues to be a key point for air operations and allied cooperation, the Mihail Kogalniceanu base continues to be developed, and the American flag will remain present at all three sites,” he added.”An air-combat group will remain at the Kogzlniceanu airbase, as was the case before the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine,” he said.The US decision will however “weaken the security” of “frontline state” Romania, Phillips O’Brien, an analyst based at Scotland’s University of St Andrews, warned.”Please wake up, Europe — the USA will not defend you against Russia,” he wrote on X.bur-pc-kym-ub/st

A US appeals court has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from deploying National Guard troops in Portland, Oregon.The move by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals vacates a ruling by a three-judge panel that would have allowed Trump to deploy troops in the Democratic-run city, part of an ongoing drive by the Republican to send troops to cities run by his political rivals that he claims are plagued by crime. The 9th Circuit voted late Tuesday to have the case reheard by an 11-judge panel, a decision welcomed by Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield.”This ruling shows the truth matters and that the courts are working to hold this administration accountable,” Rayfield said in a statement.”The Constitution limits the president’s power, and Oregon’s communities cannot be treated as a training ground for unchecked federal authority,” he said.”The court is sending a clear message: the president cannot send the military into US cities unnecessarily.”Trump has ordered hundreds of National Guard troops to Democratic-led cities claiming they are needed to combat crime and protect federal agents carrying out his sweeping immigration crackdown.The US president has repeatedly called Portland “war-ravaged” and riddled with violent crime, a description dismissed as “simply untethered to the facts” by a Trump-appointed district court judge who initially blocked the National Guard deployment.A district court and an appeals court have also blocked the deployment of National Guard troops in Chicago, the United States’ third-largest city, and the Trump administration has asked the conservative-dominated Supreme Court to lift the lower court rulings.Trump’s extraordinary domestic use of the National Guard was also challenged by Democratic-ruled California earlier this year after the Republican president sent troops to Los Angeles to quell protests sparked by the rounding up of undocumented migrants.A district court judge ruled it unlawful but an appeals court panel allowed the Los Angeles deployment to proceed.National Guard troops have also been sent to Memphis, Tennessee, and the US capital, Washington.

AI chip juggernaut Nvidia became the world’s first $5 trillion company on Wednesday, as investors remain confident that artificial intelligence will deliver a new wave of innovation and growth.The California-based tech giant saw its share price rise by 4.91 percent to $210.90 at the open of trading on Wall Street, pushing Nvidia’s market capitalization past the never-before-seen threshold.By way of comparison, the level was greater than the GDP of France or Germany or higher than that of Tesla, Meta (Facebook), and Netflix combined.Microsoft and Apple, the two other largest global market capitalizations, only just exceed $4 trillion in valuation each.The surge in Nvidia’s share price follows continued strong sales, a flurry of new deals — including a partnership with Europe’s Nokia announced on Tuesday — as well as expectations that the company may soon regain access to China.The company is “largely ahead of any competitor who finds it hard to catch up in the world that Nvidia lives in,” Art Hogan of B. Riley Wealth Management told AFP.”While it’s almost unfathomable to think about a company reaching this milestone, it comes from a company with so many operational efficiencies that seems to announce massive deals on a daily or weekly basis.”Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is expected in South Korea this week, where he will attend the sidelines of the APEC summit at which US President Donald Trump will meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, with issues related to AI development expected to be discussed.Nvidia chips are currently not sold in China due to a combination of Chinese government bans, national security concerns, and ongoing trade tensions between the United States and China.The Trump administration favors a more nuanced approach to selling AI chips to Beijing, but faces deep skepticism from China hawks across the US political spectrum who favor tougher bans on AI technology.Nvidia has announced a series of partnerships in recent weeks, including an intention to invest up to $100 billion in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI over the coming years.It also said it would invest $5 billion in struggling chip rival Intel, in response to the Trump administration’s desire to bring back more manufacturing of semiconductors to the United States.- ‘Better, not worse’ -Nvidia produces the advanced graphics processing units (GPUs) that power most generative AI systems, including those behind ChatGPT and other large language models.Although it was not the first to develop GPUs, the California-based group made them its specialty in the late 1990s, quickly pivoting from video games to the then-emerging field of cloud computing, and thus has unique experience in the area.The eyewatering valuations linked to artificial intelligence also include OpenAI becoming the world’s most valuable private company, currently valued at $500 billion.This has sparked talk that the AI frenzy may have entered bubble territory, reminiscent of the 1990s internet investment boom that saw a major reckoning in 2000, when high-flying companies saw their share prices collapse suddenly.Analyst Sam Stovall of CFRA, a research firm, said Nvidia’s expected growth was still very strong and that investors should expect news surrounding the company “will only get better, not worse.”Still, “valuations are elevated… and could therefore be vulnerable to any upsetting news,” he added.

Startup Character.AI announced Wednesday it would eliminate chat capabilities for users under 18, a policy shift that follows the suicide of a 14-year-old who had become emotionally attached to one of its AI chatbots.The company said it would transition younger users to alternative creative features such as video, story and stream creation with AI characters, while maintaining a complete ban on direct conversations that will start on November 25.The platform will implement daily chat time limits of two hours for underage users during the transition period, with restrictions tightening progressively until the November deadline.”These are extraordinary steps for our company, and ones that, in many respects, are more conservative than our peers,” Character.AI said in a statement. “But we believe they are the right thing to do.”The Character.AI platform allows users — many of them young people — to interact with beloved characters as friends or to form romantic relationships with them.Sewell Setzer III shot himself in February after months of intimate exchanges with a “Game of Thrones”-inspired chatbot based on the character Daenerys Targaryen, according to a lawsuit filed by his mother, Megan Garcia.Character.AI cited “recent news reports raising questions” from regulators and safety experts about content exposure and the broader impact of open-ended AI interactions on teenagers as driving factors behind its decision.Setzer’s case was the first in a series of reported suicides linked to AI chatbots that emerged this year, prompting ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and other artificial intelligence companies to face scrutiny over child safety.Matthew Raines, a California father, filed suit against OpenAI in August after his 16-year-old son died by suicide following conversations with ChatGPT that included advice on stealing alcohol and rope strength for self-harm.OpenAI this week released data suggesting that more than 1 million people using its generative AI chatbot weekly have expressed suicidal ideation.OpenAI has since increased parental controls for ChatGPT and introduced other guardrails. These include expanded access to crisis hotlines, automatic rerouting of sensitive conversations to safer models, and gentle reminders for users to take breaks during extended sessions.As part of its overhaul, Character.AI announced the creation of the AI Safety Lab, an independent nonprofit focused on developing safety protocols for next-generation AI entertainment features. The United States, like much of the world, lacks national regulations governing AI risks.California Governor Gavin Newsom this month signed a law requiring platforms to remind users that they are interacting with a chatbot and not a human. He vetoed, however, a bill that would have made tech companies legally liable for harm caused by AI models.