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President Donald Trump said Sunday a group of buyers had been found for TikTok, which faces a looming ban in the United States due to its China ties, adding he could name the purchasers in two weeks.”We have a buyer for TikTok, by the way,” Trump said in an interview on Fox’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo. “Very wealthy people. It’s a group of wealthy people,” the president said, without revealing more except to say he would make their identities known “in about two weeks.”The president also said he would likely need “China approval” for the sale, “and I think President Xi (Jinping) will probably do it.”TikTok is owned by China-based internet company ByteDance.A federal law requiring TikTok’s sale or ban on national security grounds was due to take effect the day before Trump’s inauguration on January 20. But the Republican, whose 2024 election campaign relied heavily on social media and who has said he is fond of TikTok, put the ban on pause. In mid-June Trump extended a deadline for the popular video-sharing app by another 90 days to find a non-Chinese buyer or be banned in the United States.Tech experts quickly described the TikTok kerfuffle as a symbol of the heated US-China tech rivalry. While Trump had long supported a ban or divestment, he reversed his position and vowed to defend the platform — which boasts almost two billion global users — after coming to believe it helped him win young voters’ support in the November election.”I have a little warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” Trump told NBC News in early May. “If it needs an extension, I would be willing to give it an extension.”Now after two extensions pushed the deadline to June 19, Trump has extended it for a third time.He said in May that a group of purchasers was ready to pay ByteDance “a lot of money” for TikTok’s US operations.The previous month he said China would have agreed to a deal on the sale of TikTok if it were not for a dispute over Trump’s tariffs on Beijing.ByteDance has confirmed talks with the US government, saying key matters needed to be resolved and that any deal would be “subject to approval under Chinese law.”

US President Donald Trump branded the winner of New York City’s mayoral Democratic primary a “pure communist” in remarks that aired Sunday, an epithet the progressive candidate dismissed as political theatrics.Zohran Mamdani’s shock win last week against a scandal-scarred political heavyweight resonated as a thunderclap within the party, and drew the ire of Trump and his collaborators, who accused Mamdani of being a radical extremist.The Republican’s aggressive criticism of the self-described democratic socialist is sure to ramp up over the coming months as Trump’s party seeks to push Democrats away from the political center and frame them as too radical to win major US elections.”He’s pure communist” and a “radical leftist… lunatic,” Trump fumed on Fox News talk show “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.””I think it’s very bad for New York,” added Trump, who grew up in the city and built his sprawling real estate business there.”If he does get in, I’m going to be president and he is going to have to do the right thing (or) they’re not getting any money” from the federal government.Trump’s White House has repeatedly threatened to curb funding for Democratic-led US cities if they oppose his policies, including cutting off money to so-called sanctuary cities which limit their cooperation with immigration authorities. Mamdani also took to the talk shows Sunday, asserting he would “absolutely” maintain New York’s status as a sanctuary city so that “New Yorkers can get out of the shadows and into the full life of the city that they belong to.”Asked directly on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether he is a communist, Mamdani — a 33-year-old immigrant aiming to become New York’s first Muslim mayor — responded “No, I am not. “And I have already had to start to get used to the fact that the president will talk about how I look, how I sound, where I’m from, who I am, ultimately because he wants to distract from what I’m fighting for,” Mamdani said.”I’m fighting for the very working people that he ran a campaign to empower, that he has since then betrayed.”The Ugandan-born state assemblyman had trailed former governor Andrew Cuomo in polls but surged on a message of lower rents, free daycare and buses, and other populist ideas in the notoriously expensive metropolis.Although registered Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one in New York, victory for Mamdani in November is not assured.Current Mayor Eric Adams is a Democrat but is campaigning for re-election as an independent, while Cuomo may also run unaffiliated.

US senators debated into the early hours of Sunday Donald Trump’s “big beautiful” spending bill, a hugely divisive proposal that would deliver key parts of the US president’s domestic agenda while making massive cuts to social welfare programs.Trump is hoping to seal his legacy with the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which would extend his expiring first-term tax cuts at a cost of $4.5 trillion and beef up border security.But Republicans eyeing 2026 midterm congressional elections are divided over the package, which would strip health care from millions of the poorest Americans and add more than $3 trillion to the country’s debt.The Senate formally opened debate on the bill late Saturday, after Republican holdouts delayed what should have been a procedural vote — drawing Trump’s ire on social media. Senators narrowly passed the motion to begin debate, 51-49, hours after the vote was first called, with Vice President JD Vance joining negotiations with holdouts from his own party.Ultimately, two Republican senators joined 47 Democrats in voting “nay” on opening debate.Trump has pushed his party to get the bill passed and on his desk for him to sign into law by July 4, the United States’ independence day.”Tonight we saw a GREAT VICTORY in the Senate,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform after the vote to begin debate.”Republicans must remember that they are fighting against a very evil, corrupt and, in many ways, incompetent (Policywise!) group of people, who would rather see our Country ‘go down in flames’ than do the right thing,” he said in an earlier post.Democrats are bitterly opposed to the legislation and Trump’s agenda, and have vowed to hold up the debate. They began by insisting that the entirety of the bill be read aloud to the chamber before the debate commences. The bill is roughly 1,000 pages long and will take an estimated 15 hours to read.”Republicans won’t tell America what’s in the bill,” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. “So Democrats are forcing it to be read start to finish on the floor. We will be here all night if that’s what it takes to read it.”If passed in the Senate, the bill would go back to the House for approval, where Republicans can only afford to lose a handful of votes — and are facing stiff opposition from within their own ranks.- Divisive cuts -Republicans are scrambling to offset the $4.5 trillion cost of Trump’s tax relief, with many of the proposed cuts to come from decimating funding for Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income Americans.Republicans are split on the Medicaid cuts, which will threaten scores of rural hospitals and lead to an estimated 8.6 million Americans being deprived of health care.The spending plan would also roll back many of the tax incentives for renewable energy that were put in place under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden.On Saturday, former Trump advisor Elon Musk — with whom the president had a public falling out this month over his criticism of the bill — called the current proposal “utterly insane and destructive.””It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future,” said Musk, who is the world’s richest person, and owns electric vehicle company Tesla and space flight firm SpaceX, among others.Independent analysis also shows that the bill would pave the way for a historic redistribution of wealth from the poorest 10 percent of Americans to the richest.The bill is unpopular across multiple demographic, age and income groups, according to extensive recent polling. Although the House has already passed its own version, both chambers have to agree on the same text before it can be signed into law.

YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul cruised to victory over Mexico’s Julio Cesar Chavez Jr on Saturday in a one-sided cruiserweight bout in California.Paul, whose last fight was a controversial clash with 58-year-old former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson in November, dominated from the outset to win by unanimous decision. The 28-year-old influencer, who has earned millions from a string of lucrative contests in a ring career that has spanned 13 fights, had too much speed and power for Chavez Jr.The three judges at ringside scored the 10-round fight 99-91, 97-93, 98-92 in Paul’s favour.Chavez Jr, the 39-year-old son of Mexican boxing great Julio Cesar Chavez, barely looked capable of mustering a response during a one-sided bout.Chavez Jr failed to land a single punch in the opening round, a pattern that followed the remainder of the contest, with Paul easily outscoring the veteran of 63 professional fights.Paul, who reportedly pocketed around $40 million for his made-for-Netflix fight with Tyson last year, received around $300,000 guaranteed from Saturday’s bout.However the American is expected to earn around $8-10 million from the fight once earnings from pay-per-view and sponsorships are taken into account.

In the sweltering US summer, metal containers decorated with snowmen and sleighs are taking shape — but tempers are also rising as their manufacturer grapples with President Donald Trump’s steep steel tariffs.At Independent Can’s factory in Belcamp, Maryland northeast of Baltimore, CEO Rick Huether recounts how he started working at his family’s business at age 14.Huether, now 73, says he is determined to keep his manufacturing company afloat for generations to come. But Trump’s tariffs are complicating this task.”We’re living in chaos right now,” he told AFP.Since returning to the presidency in January, Trump imposed tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and aluminum — and then doubled the rate to 50 percent.This has weighed on operations at Independent Can, and Huether expects he eventually will have to raise prices.- Not enough tinplate -With the steady beat of presses, steel plates that have been coated with tin — to prevent corrosion — are turned into containers for cookies, dried fruit, coffee and milk powder at Huether’s factory.But there is not enough of such American-made tinplate for companies like his.”In the United States, we can only make about 25 percent of the tinplate that’s required to do what we do,” in addition to what other manufacturers need, Huether said.”Those all require us to buy in the neighborhood of 70 percent of our steel outside of the United States,” he added.While Huether is a proponent of growing the US manufacturing base, saying globalization has “gone almost a little bit too far,” he expressed concern about Trump’s methods.Trump has announced a stream of major tariffs only to later back off parts of them or postpone them, and also imposed duties on items the country does not produce.For now, Independent Can — which employs nearly 400 people at four sites — is ruling out any layoffs despite the current upheaval.But Huether said one of the company’s plants in Iowa closed last year in part because of a previous increase in steel tariffs, during Trump’s first presidential term.- Price hikes -With steel tariffs at 50 percent now, Huether expects he will ultimately have to raise his prices by more than 20 percent, given that tinplate represents a part of his production costs.Some buyers have already reduced their orders this year by 20 to 25 percent, over worries about the economy and about not having enough business themselves.Others now seem more inclined to buy American, but Huether expressed reservations over how long this trend might last, citing his experiences from the Covid-19 crisis. “During the pandemic, we took everybody in. As China shut down and the ports were locked up, our business went up 50 percent,” he explained.But when the pandemic was over, customers turned back to purchasing from China, he said.”Today if people want to come to us, we’ll take them in,” he said, but added: “We need to have a two-year contract.”Huether wants to believe that his company, which is almost a century old after being founded during the Great Depression, will weather the latest disruptions.”I think that our business will survive,” he said, but added: “It’s trying to figure out what you’re going to sell in the next six months.”

The world’s most advanced AI models are exhibiting troubling new behaviors – lying, scheming, and even threatening their creators to achieve their goals.In one particularly jarring example, under threat of being unplugged, Anthropic’s latest creation Claude 4 lashed back by blackmailing an engineer and threatened to reveal an extramarital affair.Meanwhile, ChatGPT-creator OpenAI’s o1 tried to download itself onto external servers and denied it when caught red-handed.These episodes highlight a sobering reality: more than two years after ChatGPT shook the world, AI researchers still don’t fully understand how their own creations work. Yet the race to deploy increasingly powerful models continues at breakneck speed.This deceptive behavior appears linked to the emergence of “reasoning” models -AI systems that work through problems step-by-step rather than generating instant responses.According to Simon Goldstein, a professor at the University of Hong Kong, these newer models are particularly prone to such troubling outbursts.”O1 was the first large model where we saw this kind of behavior,” explained Marius Hobbhahn, head of Apollo Research, which specializes in testing major AI systems.These models sometimes simulate “alignment” — appearing to follow instructions while secretly pursuing different objectives.- ‘Strategic kind of deception’ – For now, this deceptive behavior only emerges when researchers deliberately stress-test the models with extreme scenarios. But as Michael Chen from evaluation organization METR warned, “It’s an open question whether future, more capable models will have a tendency towards honesty or deception.”The concerning behavior goes far beyond typical AI “hallucinations” or simple mistakes. Hobbhahn insisted that despite constant pressure-testing by users, “what we’re observing is a real phenomenon. We’re not making anything up.”Users report that models are “lying to them and making up evidence,” according to Apollo Research’s co-founder. “This is not just hallucinations. There’s a very strategic kind of deception.”The challenge is compounded by limited research resources. While companies like Anthropic and OpenAI do engage external firms like Apollo to study their systems, researchers say more transparency is needed. As Chen noted, greater access “for AI safety research would enable better understanding and mitigation of deception.”Another handicap: the research world and non-profits “have orders of magnitude less compute resources than AI companies. This is very limiting,” noted Mantas Mazeika from the Center for AI Safety (CAIS).- No rules -Current regulations aren’t designed for these new problems. The European Union’s AI legislation focuses primarily on how humans use AI models, not on preventing the models themselves from misbehaving. In the United States, the Trump administration shows little interest in urgent AI regulation, and Congress may even prohibit states from creating their own AI rules.Goldstein believes the issue will become more prominent as AI agents – autonomous tools capable of performing complex human tasks – become widespread.”I don’t think there’s much awareness yet,” he said.All this is taking place in a context of fierce competition.Even companies that position themselves as safety-focused, like Amazon-backed Anthropic, are “constantly trying to beat OpenAI and release the newest model,” said Goldstein. This breakneck pace leaves little time for thorough safety testing and corrections.”Right now, capabilities are moving faster than understanding and safety,” Hobbhahn acknowledged, “but we’re still in a position where we could turn it around.”.Researchers are exploring various approaches to address these challenges. Some advocate for “interpretability” – an emerging field focused on understanding how AI models work internally, though experts like CAIS director Dan Hendrycks remain skeptical of this approach.Market forces may also provide some pressure for solutions. As Mazeika pointed out, AI’s deceptive behavior “could hinder adoption if it’s very prevalent, which creates a strong incentive for companies to solve it.”Goldstein suggested more radical approaches, including using the courts to hold AI companies accountable through lawsuits when their systems cause harm. He even proposed “holding AI agents legally responsible” for accidents or crimes – a concept that would fundamentally change how we think about AI accountability.

At least 500 protesters marched through Venice on Saturday, condemning Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s wedding to journalist Lauren Sanchez, a lavish affair that has drawn backlash in the historic Italian city.”Bezos, out of the lagoon”, the demonstrators chanted as they wound through the city centre, some brandishing signs that read: “Eat the rich”, “Rejected”, and accusations that Venice’s mayor is “corrupt”.The peaceful protest, held in sweltering heat, was led by the “No place for Bezos” group, which has campaigned for days against what it calls the couple’s harmful economic and environmental footprint on the city.”We are here against what Bezos represents, his model, the Amazon model, based on exploiting people and land,” said Alice Bazzoli, 24, an activist with “No Space for Bezos” who has lived in Venice for five years, speaking to AFPTV.Protesters later unfurled a large “No place for Bezos” banner and lit flares above the famous Rialto Bridge spanning the Grand Canal.Matteo Battistuta, a 20-year-old student, said he wanted to send the message that “Venice is fighting back, it’s not a dead city, it acts in its own interest before tourism’s”.”We believe Venice can still be a place worth living in,” he added.Bezos, 61, and Sanchez, 55, exchanged vows during a ceremony Friday evening on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, opposite St Mark’s Square.The ceremony capped off a week of yacht parties and VIP events, due to end with a lavish ball Saturday night — as Venetians remain divided over the impact on the city’s image.Guests included Ivanka Trump, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kim Kardashian, Kendall and Kylie Jenner, American football star Tom Brady, TV host Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates.

The head of a prestigious US public university resigned Friday amid pressure over his alleged failure to curb diversity programs, the latest salvo in the Trump administration’s war on academia.The Department of Justice had privately pressured the University of Virginia to fire its president to help resolve a probe of its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, according to the New York Times, which broke the story late Thursday. It had reportedly threatened to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding. “I cannot make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government in order to save my own job,” UVA President Jim Ryan said in a statement Friday.Ryan wrote that risking federal funding cuts by staying in his role “would not only be quixotic but appear selfish and self-centered to the hundreds of employees who would lose their jobs, the researchers who would lose their funding, and the hundreds of students who could lose financial aid or have their visas withheld.”Ryan took the helm of the elite University of Virginia in 2018, a year after white supremacists marched with flaming torches through its campus amid heated debate over the removal of some Confederate monuments in southern states.Ryan’s efforts to make the school more diverse and increase the number of first-generation university students reportedly rankled some conservative alumni.”It is outrageous that officials in the Trump Department of Justice demanded the Commonwealth’s globally recognized university remove President Ryan — a strong leader who has served UVA honorably and moved the university forward — over ridiculous ‘culture war’ traps,” Virginia’s two Democratic senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, said in statement.Trump is attacking US universities and other sources of what he sees as left-leaning power in the country as he moves to exert unprecedented presidential control over life in America. A top area of conflict has been “diversity, equity and inclusion,” or DEI, programs that sought to correct historic demographic inequity in admissions and funding, but have been criticized as unfair to otherwise well-qualified candidates.Trump notably piled pressure on Harvard University, seeking to ban it from having foreign students, slashing more than $3 billion in grants and contracts, and challenging its tax-free status.Some observers said Friday’s developments were an alarming sign for public universities, which are particularly reliant on state and federal funding.”Ryan’s resignation portends a future in which all public university presidents must conform to the political views of their state’s leadership or be kicked out of office,” wrote Inside Higher Ed, an online publication about education.

Sean “Diddy” Combs’s lawyer aimed Friday to skewer the credibility of the music mogul’s accusers, saying in closing arguments they were out for money while rejecting any notion he led a criminal ring.But in their rebuttal — the trial’s final stage before jurors are tasked with deciding the verdict — prosecutors tore into the defense, saying Combs’s team had “contorted the facts endlessly.”Prosecutor Maurene Comey told jurors that by the time Combs — once among the most powerful people in music — had committed his clearest-cut offenses, “he was so far past the line he couldn’t even see it.””In his mind he was untouchable,” she told the court. “The defendant never thought that the women he abused would have the courage to speak out loud what he had done to them.””That ends in this courtroom,” she said. “The defendant is not a god.”For most of Friday’s hearing defense attorney Marc Agnifilo picked apart, and even made light of, the testimony of women who were in long-term relationships with Combs, and who said he had coerced them into drug-fueled sex parties with paid escorts.Agnifilo scoffed at the picture painted by prosecutors of a violent, domineering man who used his employees, wealth and power to foster “a climate of fear” that allowed him to act with impunity.Combs, 55, is a “self-made, successful Black entrepreneur” who had romantic relationships that were “complicated” but consensual, Agnifilo said.In his freewheeling, nearly four-hour-long argument, Agnifilo aimed to confuse the methodic narrative US attorney Christy Slavik provided one day prior.She had spent nearly five hours meticulously walking the jury through the charges and their legal basis, summarizing thousands of phone, financial, travel and audiovisual records along with nearly seven weeks of testimony from 34 witnesses.Central to their case is the claim that Combs led a criminal enterprise of senior employees — including his chief-of-staff and security guards — who “existed to serve his needs.”But Agnifilo underscored that none of those individuals testified against Combs, nor were they named as co-conspirators.”This is supposed to be simple,” the defense counsel told jurors. “If you find that you’re in the weeds of this great complexity, maybe it’s because it just isn’t there.”If convicted, Combs faces upwards of life in prison.- ‘Brazen’ -Casandra Ventura and a woman who testified under the pseudonym Jane described abuse, threats and coercive sex in excruciating detail.Combs’s defense has conceded that domestic violence was a feature of the artist’s relationships, but that his outbursts did not amount to sex trafficking.The defense insisted the women were consenting adults.Prosecutor Comey snapped back that they were being “manipulated” into “brazen” acts of sex trafficking, reiterating once again for jurors what the government says are the clearest-cut examples.Agnifilo pointed to Ventura’s civil lawsuit against Combs in which she was granted $20 million: “If you had to pick a winner in this whole thing, it would be Cassie,” he said.Comey called that notion insulting: “What was her prize? Black eyes? A gash in her head? Sex for days with a UTI?”The prosecutor also pointed to a violent episode between Combs and Jane, when she says she struck him in an argument before he brutally beat her, knocked her down in the shower, and then forced her into giving an escort oral sex.”Jane may have started that fight, but he finished it with a vengeance,” Comey said, calling that incident the most obvious sex trafficking case and saying he had “literally beaten her into submission.”Throughout the trial, jurors were shown voluminous phone records, including messages of affection and desire from both women — and Agnifilo emphasized the love and romance once again.Both prosecutors said taking those words literally, and in isolation, doesn’t paint the whole picture. They also referenced testimony from a forensic psychologist who explained to jurors how victims become ensnared by abusers.”The defense is throwing anything they can think of at the wall, hoping something will stick,” Comey said.On Monday, Judge Arun Subramanian will instruct jurors on how to apply the law to the evidence for their deliberations. Then, 12 New Yorkers will determine Combs’s future.But Combs’s legal worries may not end there, after three new sexual assault lawsuits were filed against him this week. One was by a woman who alleged the rapper’s son, Justin, lured her from the southern state of Louisiana to Los Angeles where she was held captive, drugged and gang raped by three masked men in 2017. One of the men was allegedly Sean Combs.The other two cases were filed by men who accuse the rapper and his team of drugging and sexually assaulting them at parties in 2021 and 2023.

California Governor Gavin Newsom filed a lawsuit Friday against broadcaster Fox News, claiming defamation after alleged purposeful misrepresentation of details of a phone call with US President Donald Trump earlier this month.The suit seeks $787 million in damages and was filed in a Delaware court, where Fox News is registered as a corporation.Trump and Newsom spoke on the phone in the early hours of June 7 Washington time, but the pair did not address protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids occurring throughout Los Angeles, according to the lawsuit.Later that day, Republican Trump ordered thousands of National Guard troops to deploy to the city in response to the protests, against the wishes of the Democratic governor.Trump said during a June 10 White House press conference that he talked with Newsom “a day ago” — a claim the California politician quickly refuted on social media.”There was no call. Not even a voicemail,” Newsom wrote on X.In response, Fox News host Jesse Watters claimed Newsom was lying about the call.Another Fox News reporter, John Roberts, said Trump sent him a call log to prove Newsom was lying, but the screenshot he provided showed the call happened on June 7.”Rather than leave the matter alone, or simply provide the facts, Fox News chose to defame Governor Newsom, branding him a liar,” the lawsuit said.Newsom told broadcaster MeidasTouch he was used to criticism from Fox News, “but this crossed the line — journalistic lines, ethical lines, defamation, malice.”The lawsuit said Fox News deliberately mislead viewers about the call to harm Newsom’s career, saying those who watched Watters’s report would be less likely to support his future campaigns.Fox News called the lawsuit a “publicity stunt.”It said in a statement to AFP that the legal action “is frivolous and designed to chill free speech critical of him.”Newsom in a statement compared his case to a 2023 lawsuit against Fox News filed by election technology company Dominion Voting Systems, which said the broadcaster knowingly spread lies that its voting machines swayed the 2020 presidential election against Trump.The amount Newsom’s lawsuit seeks in damages, $787 million, is nearly the same as the amount Fox News paid in a settlement to Dominion.