AFP USA

US Attorney General Pam Bondi faced fiery questioning Tuesday from senators who accuse her of transforming the Justice Department into a tool of President Donald Trump’s efforts to target his perceived enemies.Bondi has courted huge controversy since taking over as the nation’s top law enforcement official, amid criticism that she has failed to maintain the guardrails keeping the department separate from the White House. Former president Joe Biden “never directed the attorney general to prosecute his political opponents,” Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told her in a blistering opening speech.”This is your legacy, Attorney General Bondi. In eight short months, you fundamentally transformed the Justice Department and left an enormous stain in American history.”Trump warned repeatedly during the 2024 election campaign that he would go after his political foes, and appeared to berate Bondi in a recent social media post, dressing down someone he referred to as “Pam” over the lack of action by government prosecutors. Shortly after, federal prosecutors sent shockwaves through Washington by indicting former FBI director James Comey, who led a probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.Comey is due in court on Wednesday, accused of lying to Congress in a case many legal experts say looks specious. The launch of investigations into US Senator Adam Schiff, former national security advisor John Bolton and New York Attorney General Letitia James — all of whom have publicly opposed Trump — have added to the controversy.Both Schiff and James were singled out in Trump’s post apparently upbraiding Bondi.Senators also pressed Bondi on the legal basis for Trump’s use of federal troops in cities he says are rife with crime, a crackdown critics say is unconstitutional.Trump has focused on Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, Memphis and Portland — all of which have Democratic leaders.- ‘Weaponization’ -Bondi offered a defiant defense of her record, telling senators that she was working to reinstate public faith undermined by the weaponization of her department under the previous administration.”We are returning to our core mission of fighting real crime. While there is more work to do, I believe in eight short months, we have made tremendous progress towards those ends,” she said.Before his election wiped away his own legal woes, Trump was facing multiple indictments for allegedly hoarding sensitive state secrets and leading a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election result.  Republicans say the Justice Department under President Joe Biden — which led two of the indictments — has more questions to answer over weaponization than Bondi’s team.On the eve of the hearing, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley published FBI documents showing that Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal prosecutions into Trump, secretly gathered phone records on the contacts of eight Republican senators. “That’s what we’ve been talking about when we refer to the weaponization of government… we are ending this weaponization,” Bondi said when Grassley brought up the issue. “Our FBI is targeting violent criminals, child predators and other law breakers, not sitting senators who happen to be from the wrong political party.”Bondi also faced heat on her handling of the files relating to the federal investigation into notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. House Democrats — supported by a handful of Republicans — have been pressing for the release of the entire case file, after Bondi announced that the case was closed and that she had no new information to offer.

The dizzying investments in artificial intelligence infrastructure do not constitute a bubble but rather represent today’s “new normal” to meet skyrocketing user demand, Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s de facto number two, said on Monday.The French-born executive made her comments in an interview with AFP, her first since taking up her role as Chief Operating Officer of OpenAI’s applications, including its flagship model ChatGPT.In the past few weeks, her company, under the leadership of CEO Sam Altman, has made a series of huge investments in data centers and AI chips, despite no real signs that the fast-emerging AI business is close to breaking even.The answers were lightly edited for length and clarity.- Is the AI investment frenzy a bubble right now? -What I am seeing here is a massive investment in compute (or computing power), with us meeting that need for computing power so incredibly badly for a lot of use cases that people want. [Video AI generator] Sora is a great example right now — there’s much more demand than we can serve.From that perspective, I really do not see that as a bubble. I see that as a new normal, and I think the world is going to switch to realizing that computing power is the most strategic resource.- What do you say to those who fret over AI’s dangers? -I see my job as really making sure that the good side of this technology happens and we mitigate the bad side.Take mental health, for example. I’m hearing tons of users say that they go to ChatGPT for advice in tough moments where they may not have other people to talk to. Many people can’t afford to go to a therapist. I talk to a lot of parents who are telling me: God, I got this really awesome advice that helped me unlock a situation with my child. But at the same time, we need to make sure that the model behaves as expected.On mental health, we have announced a very robust roadmap. We started with parental controls. We have plans to launch age prediction: if we can predict that the user is a teenager, we give them a model that is less permissive than we would give to an adult.Jobs are also very much on my mind, and it’s a similar approach. AI is going to create a lot of jobs, like prompt engineering, that absolutely did not exist before. At the same time, there are some professions that are going to be directly impacted, and we see our role as helping with the transition.- What are the next steps toward intelligent AI? -I think the breakthroughs are about models understanding your goals and helping accomplish them proactively.Not just give you a good answer to a question, not just have a dialog, but actually tell you, ‘Oh, okay, you’re telling me that you want to spend more time with your wife. Well, there might be some weekend getaways that would be helpful, and I know it’s a lot to plan, so I’ve already done all the planning for you and I’ve already made some reservations. Just tap one button to approve and everything gets done.’We’re still very early, but we’re on that journey to capture that.- In San Francisco, you sometimes hear: ‘America innovates, China copies, Europe regulates’ -As a European, every time I hear this saying, my heart breaks a bit. I think there has certainly been a tendency in Europe to focus on regulation a little too much.On China, we continue to be extremely focused on continuing to have a lead, because we see China continuing to invest heavily in being competitive — whether in terms of innovation or in terms of computing — and so we think it’s incredibly important to continue investing across a democratic bloc to advance AI that has these [democratic] values.- Do you let your child use ChatGPT? -ChatGPT is not supposed to be for under 13, but my kid is 10 — I still let her use it under supervision. It’s magical to see what she’s able to create. Just this weekend, she was telling me about creating a new business. She was using ChatGPT to make banners for the new business, to create taglines.In our childhood, we couldn’t turn our imagination into something real that fast. And I see that really giving her superpowers, where she thinks anything is possible.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is slated to visit Washington again Tuesday in hopes of convincing President Donald Trump to ease US tariffs that are negatively impacting Canada’s economy.In Carney’s “working visit” to the White House — his second trip since winning office in April — the 60-year-old former banker seeks to restore bilateral relations and discuss “shared priorities in a new economic and security relationship between Canada and the US,” Ottawa said in a statement.White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt confirmed the visit, saying Monday: “I’m sure trade will be a topic of discussion tomorrow, and all of the other issues that are facing both Canada and the United States.”Unlike other US allies, such as the European Union, Canada has not yet cut a deal for a comprehensive trade agreement with its neighbor.The United States is Canada’s main economic partner, with 75 percent of Ottawa’s exports being sold across its southern border.Canada saw its GDP decline by 1.5 percent in the second quarter, adding to the economic pressure.Trump has already imposed tariffs on lumber, aluminum, steel and automobiles. On Monday, he announced 25 percent tariffs on heavy trucks starting November 1.For now, the vast majority of trade remains protected by the USMCA, a free-trade agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico. But the agreement faces renegotiation soon, and the Republican president has already called for a revision that would favor American industries.- Mounting pressure -As a former central banker who entered politics less than a year ago, Carney faces growing criticism domestically, where he campaigned on his extensive crisis management experience.Six months later, “pressure is mounting to, at minimum, secure a reduction in certain tariffs, like those on steel and aluminum,” said Daniel Beland, a political scientist at McGill University in Montreal.”Mark Carney has no choice, he must return from Washington with progress,” he added, noting Carney has already made several concessions without getting anything in return.At the end of June, Carney canceled a tax targeting American tech giants under pressure from Trump, who called it outrageous. He also lifted many of the tariffs imposed by the previous government, but Washington’s lack of reciprocal response to these moves has sparked strong criticism from the opposition in Canada.”If you return with excuses, broken promises and photo ops, you will have failed our workers, our businesses and our country,” conservative opposition leader Pierre Poilievre wrote in an open letter to Carney on Monday.While Canadians await outcomes, “they are also aware there’s always a risk when negotiating with Donald Trump. These meetings can easily go off track, and everything plays out publicly,” said Genevieve Tellier, a political scientist at the University of Ottawa.Last week, the 79-year-old American president repeated his desire to make Canada “the 51st state” during a speech to US generals and admirals, referencing the country’s potential participation in a new “Golden Dome” missile shield.”Canada called me a couple of weeks ago, they want to be part of it,” Trump claimed. “To which I said, well, why don’t you just join our country” and “become the 51st state, and you get it for free.” 

The dizzying investments in artificial intelligence infrastructure do not constitute a bubble but rather represent today’s “new normal” to meet skyrocketing user demand, Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s de facto number two, said on Monday.The French-born executive made her comments in an interview with AFP, her first since taking up her role as Chief Operating Officer of OpenAI’s applications, including its flagship model ChatGPT.In the past few weeks, her company, under the leadership of CEO Sam Altman, has made a series of huge investments in data centers and AI chips, despite no real signs that the fast-emerging AI business is close to breaking even.The answers were lightly edited for length and clarity.- Is the AI investment frenzy a bubble right now? -What I am seeing here is a massive investment in compute (or computing power), with us meeting that need for computing power so incredibly badly for a lot of use cases that people want. [Video AI generator] Sora is a great example right now — there’s much more demand than we can serve.From that perspective, I really do not see that as a bubble. I see that as a new normal, and I think the world is going to switch to realizing that computing power is the most strategic resource.- What do you say to those who fret over AI’s dangers? -I see my job as really making sure that the good side of this technology happens and we mitigate the bad side.Take mental health, for example. I’m hearing tons of users say that they go to ChatGPT for advice in tough moments where they may not have other people to talk to. Many people can’t afford to go to a therapist. I talk to a lot of parents who are telling me: God, I got this really awesome advice that helped me unlock a situation with my child. But at the same time, we need to make sure that the model behaves as expected.On mental health, we have announced a very robust roadmap. We started with parental controls. We have plans to launch age prediction: if we can predict that the user is a teenager, we give them a model that is less permissive than we would give to an adult.Jobs are also very much on my mind, and it’s a similar approach. AI is going to create a lot of jobs, like prompt engineering, that absolutely did not exist before. At the same time, there are some professions that are going to be directly impacted, and we see our role as helping with the transition.- What are the next steps toward intelligent AI? -I think the breakthroughs are about models understanding your goals and helping accomplish them proactively.Not just give you a good answer to a question, not just have a dialog, but actually tell you, ‘Oh, okay, you’re telling me that you want to spend more time with your wife. Well, there might be some weekend getaways that would be helpful, and I know it’s a lot to plan, so I’ve already done all the planning for you and I’ve already made some reservations. Just tap one button to approve and everything gets done.’We’re still very early, but we’re on that journey to capture that.- In San Francisco, you sometimes hear: ‘America innovates, China copies, Europe regulates’ -As a European, every time I hear this saying, my heart breaks a bit. I think there has certainly been a tendency in Europe to focus on regulation a little too much.On China, we continue to be extremely focused on continuing to have a lead, because we see China continuing to invest heavily in being competitive — whether in terms of innovation or in terms of computing — and so we think it’s incredibly important to continue investing across a democratic bloc to advance AI that has these [democratic] values.- Do you let your child use ChatGPT? -ChatGPT is not supposed to be for under 13, but my kid is 10 — I still let her use it under supervision. It’s magical to see what she’s able to create. Just this weekend, she was telling me about creating a new business. She was using ChatGPT to make banners for the new business, to create taglines.In our childhood, we couldn’t turn our imagination into something real that fast. And I see that really giving her superpowers, where she thinks anything is possible.

Noisy TV commercials were banned in California on Monday, with a new law that demands pitchmen turn the volume down.Viewers in the United States have long complained that advertisements can be much louder than the program they are streaming.One minute they are engrossed in a peaceful nature documentary and the next they are scrabbling for the remote to quieten a man shouting about a new treatment for his flatulence.Now a new law in America’s most populous state says commercials cannot be any louder than the content they interrupt.”We heard Californians loud and clear, and what’s clear is that they don’t want commercials at a volume any louder than the level at which they were previously enjoying a program,” Governor Gavin Newsom said after signing the bill into law.The legislation rewrites outdated laws that only regulated broadcast and cable providers to now include streamers.

President Nicolas Maduro said Monday that Venezuela foiled a false flag operation by what he called local terrorists to plant explosives at the US embassy in Caracas and exacerbate a dispute between the two countries over drug trafficking.Speaking on his weekly TV program, Maduro said two sources which he did not name “agreed on the possibility that a local terrorist group placed an explosive device at the US embassy in Caracas” in order to aggravate the dispute with Washington. Jorge Rodriguez, head of Venezuela’s delegation for dialogue with its arch-foe, said earlier that Caracas had warned Washington of “a serious threat” from alleged extremists who “attempted to plant lethal explosives at the US embassy.””We have reinforced security measures at this diplomatic mission,” added Rodriguez.The South American nation’s socialist government often accuses the opposition of plots. Caracas and Washington severed diplomatic ties in 2019, and the US embassy has been deserted, barring a few local employees.Maduro said Monday night, “it is an embassy which is protected, despite all the differences we have had with the governments of the United States.”  Washington has made Venezuela the focal point of its fight against drug trafficking, even though most of the illegal drugs entering the United States originate in, or are shipped through, Mexico.President Donald Trump’s administration has sent warships and planes to the Caribbean region and bombed several small boats off the coast of Venezuela, which it says were carrying drugs bound for the United States.At least 21 people have been killed in the strikes, which Trump claims are halting the flow of drugs across the Caribbean.”We’re stopping drugs at a level that nobody’s ever seen,” he told an audience of US Navy sailors in Virginia on Sunday.Maduro says Trump’s true goal is regime change.Caracas has responded to the “threats” by deploying thousands of troops along Venezuela’s land and sea borders and signing up thousands of members to a civilian militia.The United States did not recognize Maduro’s 2024 re-election, rejected by the Venezuelan opposition and much of the world as a stolen vote.During his first term, Trump tried to dislodge Maduro by recognizing an opposition leader as interim president and imposing sanctions on Venezuela’s all-important oil sector.But Maduro clung to power, with the support of the military.- Machado rumors -For weeks rumors have circulated on social networks that Venezuela’s current opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, in hiding since last year’s election, is sheltering at the US embassy.Her whereabouts have not been confirmed by AFP.Washington has recognized a candidate backed by Machado, former senator Eduardo Gonzalez Urrutia, as Venezuela’s rightful president.The opposition’s tally of ballots from last year’s election showed Gonzalez Urrutia, who had been the favorite to win the vote, easily defeating the unpopular Maduro.Threatened with arrest over his victory claim, Gonzalez Urrutia went into exile in Spain late last year.In a video last month, he and Machado backed the US military pressure on the Maduro regime as a “necessary measure” towards the “restoration of popular sovereignty in Venezuela.”

One of this year’s Nobel winners is a leading medical researcher who also offers a shining example of work-life balance — so much so that he might not know he won.Fred Ramsdell was among those honored Monday with a 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine, but he’s currently “living his best life” on an “off the grid” hiking foray, a spokesperson from his San Francisco-based lab, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, told AFP.Ramsdell shared the prestigious prize with Mary Brunkow of Seattle, Washington and Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University in Japan for their discoveries related to the functioning of the immune system.But the laureate’s digital detox means the Nobel committee has been unable to reach him and break the news.Jeffrey Bluestone, a friend of Ramsdell’s and co-founder of the lab, said the researcher deserves credit but he can’t reach him, either.”I have been trying to get a hold of him myself. I think he may be backpacking in the backcountry in Idaho,” Bluestone told AFP.The Nobel committee also hit a roadblock trying to reach Brunkow — both researchers are based on the US West Coast, which is nine hours behind Stockholm — but eventually got ahold of her.”I asked them to, if they have a chance, call me back,” said Thomas Perlmann, secretary-general of the Nobel committee, at the press conference announcing the winners.The three won the prize for research that identified the immune system’s “security guards”, called regulatory T-cells.Their work concerns “peripheral immune tolerance” that prevents the immune system from harming the body, and has led to a new field of research and the development of potential medical treatments now being evaluated in clinical trials.Sakaguchi, 74, made the first key find in 1995, discovering a previously unknown class of immune cells that protect the body from autoimmune diseases.Brunkow, born in 1961 and now a senior project manager at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and Ramsdell, a 64-year-old senior advisor at Sonoma Biotherapeutics, made the other key discovery in 2001.

President Donald Trump said Monday he would be “happy” to negotiate a deal on health programs with Democrats, but demanded the federal government first be re-opened, as a crippling shutdown entered its second week.Democrats are refusing to provide the handful of votes the ruling Republicans need to reopen federal departments, unless an agreement is reached on extending expiring “Obamacare” health care subsidies and reversing cuts to health programs passed as part of Trump’s signature “One Big Beautiful Bill.”With the government out of money since Wednesday, Senate Democrats blocked a House-passed temporary funding bill for a fifth time on Monday evening.The hard line taken by Democrats marks a rare moment of leverage for the opposition party in a period when Trump and his ultra-loyal Republicans control every branch of government and Trump himself is accused of seeking to amass authoritarian-like powers.With funding not renewed, non-critical services are being suspended.Salaries for hundreds of thousands of public sector employees are set to be withheld from Friday, while military personnel could miss their paychecks from October 15.And Trump has upped the ante by threatening to have large numbers of government employees fired, rather than just furloughed — placed on temporary unpaid leave — as is normally done during shutdowns.Republicans are digging in their heels, with House Speaker Mike Johnson telling his members not even to report to Congress unless the Democrats cave, insisting any debate over health care be held after re-opening the government.Trump echoed the demand in a social media post Monday evening, but appeared to be more open to future negotiations.”I am happy to work with the Democrats on their Failed Healthcare Policies, or anything else, but first they must allow our Government to re-open,” he said on his Truth Social platform.- Shutdown impacts -Earlier, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer challenged Johnson to begin health care talks immediately.”If he’s serious about lowering costs and protecting the health care of the American people, why wait?” he said in a post on X. “Democrats are ready to do it now.”The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which he signed into law on July 4, would strip 11 million Americans of health care coverage, mainly through cuts to the Medicaid program for low-income families. That figure would be in addition to the four million Americans Democrats say will lose health care next year if Obamacare health insurance subsidies are not extended — while another 24 million Americans will see their premiums double.Republicans argue the expiring health care subsidies have nothing to do with keeping the government open and can be dealt with separately before the end of the year.As the shutdown begins to bite, the Environmental Protection Agency, space agency NASA and the Education, Commerce and Labor departments have been the hardest hit by staff being furloughed — or placed on enforced leave — during the shutdown.  The Transport, Justice, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs Departments are among those that have seen the least effects so far, the contingency plans of each organization show.With members of Congress at home and no formal talks taking place in either chamber, a CBS News poll released Sunday showed the public blaming Republicans by a narrow margin for the gridlock. Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, said Sunday layoffs would begin “if the president decides that the negotiations are absolutely going nowhere.” Trump has already sent a steamroller through government since taking office for his second term in January.Spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, 200,000 jobs had already been cut from the federal workforce before the shutdown, according to the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service.

President Donald Trump threatened Monday to use emergency powers against rebellion to deploy more troops into Democratic-led US cities, intensifying his rhetoric as his attempts to mobilize the military face legal challenges.The Republican leader openly mulled use of the Insurrection Act after a federal judge in Oregon temporarily halted a National Guard deployment in Portland, while another judge in Illinois allowed a similar move to proceed for now in Chicago.Both cities have seen surges of federal agents as part of Trump’s mass deportation drive, prompting protests outside immigration processing facilities.”We have an Insurrection Act for a reason. If I had to enact it I would do that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.”If people were being killed and courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure I would do that.”Illinois officials had filed suit seeking to block the deployment in Chicago, but Judge April Perry, an appointee of Trump’s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, declined to issue an immediate temporary restraining order.She scheduled a full hearing on the matter for Thursday and asked the government to inform the court to provide more information.The debate mushroomed after it became known that Republican-led Texas was planning to send 200 of its federalized National Guard troops to Illinois, a move that infuriated Democratic Governor JB Pritzker.”They should stay the hell out of Illinois,” said Pritzker.He also accused federal immigration agents conducting raids in Chicago of “thuggery,” using “excessive force,” and illegally detaining US citizens.- ‘Fear and confusion’ -Trump’s comments about the centuries-old Insurrection Act came just minutes after Pritzker warned that Trump was creating a pre-meditated “escalation of violence” as a pretext to invoke the emergency powers.”The Trump administration is following a playbook: cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem like peaceful protesters are a mob by firing gas pellets and tear gas canisters at them,” Pritzker told a press conference.”Why? To create the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act so that he can send the military to our city.”Trump over the weekend authorized deployment of 700 National Guard members to Chicago despite the opposition of elected Democratic leaders including Pritzker and the city’s mayor.In their lawsuit, the state Attorney General Kwame Raoul and counsel for Chicago accused Trump of using US troops “to punish his political enemies.””The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor,” they said.In the press conference with Pritzker, Raoul described such planned deployments to Illinois as “unlawful and unconstitutional, no matter where these forces come from.”Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has defended the plan to send troops to Chicago, claiming that the third-largest US city is “a war zone.”Trump has similarly called Portland “war-ravaged,” but District Judge Karin Immergut issued a temporary block on the Oregon troop deployment, saying “the president’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.””This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law,” wrote Immergut, a Trump appointee.The Trump administration is appealing the ruling, the White House said.A CBS poll released Sunday found that 58 percent of Americans oppose deploying the National Guard to US cities.Illinois and Oregon are not the first states to file legal challenges against the Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard.California filed suit after Trump sent troops to Los Angeles earlier this year to quell protests sparked by a crackdown on undocumented migrants, with the case still working its way through courts.