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President Donald Trump’s former national security advisor Mike Waltz on Tuesday defiantly defended his use of a group chat to discuss military plans as he faced accusations of lying during a hearing to be US ambassador to the United Nations.The editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine said in March that Waltz had mistakenly added him to a chat among top US officials on commercial messaging app Signal about the imminent US bombing of Yemen.Senator Cory Booker of the rival Democratic Party accused Waltz of deliberately maligning the journalist by falsely saying that he infiltrated the group.”I’ve seen you not only fail to stand up, but lie,” Booker told Waltz.”I have nothing but deep disappointment in what I consider a failure of leadership on your part,” Booker told Waltz.Waltz pointed to guidance under former president Joe Biden that allowed the use of Signal, which is encrypted, and said the White House has not taken disciplinary action.”The use of Signal was not only authorized, it’s still authorized and highly recommended,” Waltz said, while insisting the chat did not exchange “classified” information.Senator Chris Coons, another Democrat, was incredulous over his explanation and voiced alarm that the White House has not taken any corrective action.”You were sharing details about an upcoming airstrike — the time of launch and the potential targets. I mean, this was demonstrably sensitive information.”Waltz, a former congressman and special forces officer, survived  little more than three months as national security advisor before Trump on May 1 replaced him with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is juggling both jobs.Waltz did not deny he has kept taking his salary, saying he was not “fired” and still served as “an advisor.”Senator Jacky Rosen, raising the salary issue, contrasted Waltz’s actions with his vow to “root out  waste and unnecessary overhead at the UN.”Trump has aggressively cut US assistance overseas and pulled the United States out of several UN-backed bodies.Waltz vowed to press for reforms at the United Nations, accusing it of “anti-Semitism” and “radical politicization” for criticisms of Israel and the United States, even though the United States is the organization’s largest funder.The United Nations, he said, has “drifted from its core mission of peacemaking.””The UN’s overall revenue has quadrupled in the last 20 years, yet I would argue we have not seen a quadrupling of world peace,” Waltz said.

US tech giant Nvidia announced Tuesday it will resume sales of its H20 artificial intelligence chips to China after Washington pledged to remove licensing restrictions that had halted exports.The California-based company produces some of the world’s most advanced semiconductors but cannot ship its most cutting-edge chips to China due to concerns that Beijing could use them to enhance military capabilities.Nvidia developed the H20 — a less powerful version of its AI processing units — specifically for export to China. However, that plan stalled when the Trump administration tightened export licensing requirements in April.”The US government has assured Nvidia that licenses will be granted, and Nvidia hopes to start deliveries soon,” the company said in a statement Tuesday, adding it was “filing applications to sell the Nvidia H20 GPU again.”CEO Jensen Huang, wearing his trademark black leather jacket, told reporters in a video published by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV: “I’m looking forward to shipping H20s very soon, and so I’m very happy with that very, very good news.”Defending the policy change, Trump’s AI Czar David Sacks told CNBC the H20 was a “deprecated chip” that is “not anywhere close to the state of the art.”He said the reversal on the H20 came because Nvidia’s Chinese rival Huawei was making “huge strides” and could potentially threaten Nvidia’s market dominance.China represents a crucial market for Nvidia, but recent US export restrictions have intensified competition from local players like homegrown champion Huawei.”We don’t want to sell China our latest greatest technology, but I do think we at least want to make it a little bit difficult for Huawei,” Sacks said.Sacks also said that the decision was linked to ongoing trade negotiations between Washington and Beijing that are locked in a bitter trade feud.Beijing has criticized Washington’s curbs as unfair and designed to hinder its development.- ‘Abrupt shifts’ -Zhang Guobin, founder of Chinese specialist website eetrend.com, said the resumption would “bring substantial revenue growth, making up for losses caused by the previous ban.” It would also ease trade friction impacts on the global semiconductor supply chain, he told AFP.However, he noted Chinese firms would remain focused on domestic chip development, adding that “the Trump administration has been prone to abrupt policy shifts, making it difficult to gauge how long such an opening might endure.”Huang will attend a major supply chain gathering Wednesday, according to event organizers, his third trip to China this year, CCTV reported.During an April visit to Beijing, Huang told Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng he “looked favorably upon the potential of the Chinese economy” and was “willing to continue to plow deeply into the Chinese market and play a positive role in promoting US-China trade cooperation,” state news agency Xinhua reported.The tightened US export curbs come as China’s economy wavers, with domestic consumers reluctant to spend and a prolonged property sector crisis weighing on growth. President Xi Jinping has called for greater self-reliance amid increasing external uncertainty.The Financial Times reported in May that Nvidia was planning to build a research and development center in Shanghai, though neither Nvidia nor city authorities confirmed the project to AFP.China’s economy grew 5.2 percent in the second quarter, official data showed Tuesday, as analysts had predicted strong exports despite trade war pressures.

Two people were killed in New Jersey following flash flooding in the northeastern United States that caused travel chaos, authorities said Tuesday, as the region braced for more heavy rain.A flood warning remained in effect until Tuesday morning for parts of New Jersey, while the slow-moving summer storm was expected to continue showering the Mid-Atlantic region into the middle of the week, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).”A moisture-rich Summer-time airmass over much of the eastern/central US will continue to lead to areas of scattered to widespread thunderstorms capable of heavy downpours and flash flooding,” the government forecaster wrote.Torrential rain inundated parts of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland on Monday night.Two people died when their vehicle was swept into a river in Plainfield, a city in New Jersey, and emergency responders at the scene were unable to save them, local officials said.It follows another storm that struck the city on July 3 that claimed two lives.”We New Jersey, we America, we the globe, are getting dragged by climate,” state Governor Phil Murphy said.In New York City, emergency officials told people living in low-lying areas or ubiquitous basement apartments to head to higher ground.Torrents of filthy rain water cascaded down Manhattan’s major avenues around the time of the evening rush hour, and commuters sought cover under building canopies and bus stops.Several major stations in the city’s subway system were flooded, with passengers sharing images on social media showing waves of water gushing past ticket barriers and onto the electrified tracks.In downtown Manhattan, dozens of passengers were reportedly trapped on a train as water poured into the 28th street station.JFK, LaGuardia and Newark airports temporarily suspended departures Monday night, forcing the cancellation of dozens of flights.FOX Forecast Center meteorologist Christopher Tate said the Big Apple overnight endured its “second wettest single hour ever recorded.”More than two inches of rain fell in a single hour.The city is no stranger to extreme weather.Hurricane Sandy in 2012 killed more than 40 New Yorkers and destroyed approximately 300 homes. Hurricane Ida in 2021 left more than a dozen dead in New York City, and damage to the subway took years to repair.- State of emergency -New Jersey’s governor declared a state of emergency, urging people to stay indoors.Authorities across the region, including as far south as North Carolina, warned of hazardous driving conditions as clean up operations were mounted across the region.The NWS urged drivers encountering flooded roads to “turn around.””Most flood deaths occur in vehicles,” it said.In Lancaster Pennsylvania, severe flash flooding prompted a disaster declaration, while emergency responders plucked people from flooded basements and conducted 16 water rescues.”Intense rainfall dropped over seven inches of rain in less than five hours,” the fire department in the county’s Mount Joy Borough posted on Facebook.Staten Island recorded four to six inches (10-15 centimeters) of rain Monday night, according to the New York borough’s emergency notification system.Zohran Mamdani, the Democrat running for mayor of New York, wrote on social media that the rapid flooding emphasized the need for climate-proofing the city.”We must upgrade our infrastructure for this new climate reality,” he wrote.The latest bad weather follows historic Fourth of July flooding that devastated parts of central Texas, killing at least 131 people and leaving more than 100 others missing.And in North Carolina, at least five people were killed when Tropical Storm Chantal slammed the coastal state last week, Governor Josh Stein said.burs-gw/mlm

US consumer inflation picked up in line with analyst expectations in June, government data showed Tuesday, with vehicle costs cooling over the month but increases seen in sectors exposed to President Donald Trump’s widening slate of tariffs.Observers anticipate they will learn more about the effects of Trump’s duties over the summer months, meaning June’s data marks the start in a series of closely-watched figures — particularly as the central bank mulls changes to interest rates.But Trump insisted in a Truth Social post after the figures were released that consumer prices were low, urging for interest rates to be cut: “Bring down the Fed Rate, NOW!!!”The consumer price index (CPI) was up 2.7 percent from a year ago in June, climbing from 2.4 percent in May as energy costs rose, said the Department of Labor.Excluding the volatile food and energy segments, “core” CPI picked up too to 2.9 percent from a year ago, and accelerated from 0.1 percent in May to 0.2 percent in June on a month-on-month basis.In particular, household furnishings and apparel saw cost hikes, and both are segments that experts are eyeing as these are more exposed to tariffs.The price increases in June signal that companies are beginning to pass on higher import costs to customers.But the costs of new and used vehicles declined last month.While Trump imposed a 10 percent tariff on almost all trading partners in April and separately slapped steeper duties on imports of steel, aluminum and autos, US officials have pushed back against warnings that these could spark price increases.Economists caution that tariff hikes could fuel inflation and weigh on economic growth, but US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has labeled such expectations “tariff derangement syndrome.”Overall, CPI rose 0.3 percent in June from the previous month, an uptick from the 0.1 percent increase in May as well.- ‘Strikingly visible’ -“Tariff costs are strikingly visible in June’s CPI data,” said Pantheon Macroeconomics’ chief US economist Samuel Tombs in a note.”Prices rose especially sharply for goods which are primarily imported, and less quickly for those that are mainly made in the US,” he added.These include appliances, sports equipment and toys, although items like mobile phones were an outlier as they are exempt from Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs targeting nearly all trading partners.Even if headline inflation shows no “meaningful” surge from tariffs alone, Nationwide economist Oren Klachkin warned it may be too soon to see their full impact just yet.Businesses have been trying to hold off consumer price hikes through actions like eating into their own margins and trying to share costs with their suppliers, he told AFP.But it remains to be seen how long they can do this. Klachkin said there could be a bigger impact over the summer.Besides steep tariffs that have already taken effect, Trump has also threatened higher levels on dozens of key partners including the European Union, India and Japan.Economists caution that consumer prices could rise further from these steeper duties, and because exemptions for goods like pharmaceuticals and semiconductors could eventually end.Trump has opened doors to levies on such sector-specific imports, injecting more uncertainty into the global economy and worries of supply chain snags.Underscoring these uncertainties, Bessent said in a Bloomberg Television interview Tuesday that he tells markets not to worry about the August deadline when higher tariffs on Chinese goods are set to kick in.Analysts and Federal Reserve policymakers are monitoring if Trump’s tariffs will trigger a one-off price hike or cause more persistent inflation.This is despite Trump insisting Tuesday in a separate post that the Fed “should cut Rates by 3 Points.””Rising prices will make it harder for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates and tougher for families living paycheck to paycheck,” said Heather Long, chief economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union.Ryan Sweet, chief US economist at Oxford Economics, added that Trump’s latest tariff threats, if put in place, will take time to feed into inflation too.This “will keep the Fed on the sideline unless the labor market takes a sudden turn for the worse,” he said.

A 54-year-old man convicted of a 1993 revenge killing is to be put to death in Florida on Tuesday in the 26th execution in the United States this year, the most in a decade.Michael Bell is to executed by lethal injection at 6:00 pm (2200 GMT) at the Florida State Prison in Raiford for the murders of Jimmy West, 23, and Tamecka Smith, 18.There have been seven executions in Florida this year and 25 across the nation. Bell’s execution will take the US total for the year to 26, the most since the 28 executions in 2015.Nine other executions are currently scheduled this year.Bell was convicted in 1995 of shooting West and Smith outside a liquor store in Jacksonville and sentenced to death.According to court records, Bell was seeking revenge for the killing of his brother Lamar Bell several months earlier by West’s half-brother, Theodore Wright.Citing new evidence and recanted trial testimony, Bell has been seeking to halt his execution but the Florida Supreme Court denied his latest appeal, saying the evidence of his guilt was “overwhelming.”Twenty executions have been carried out by lethal injection in the United States this year. Two have been by firing squad and three by nitrogen hypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a face mask, causing the prisoner to suffocate.The use of nitrogen gas as a method of capital punishment has been denounced by United Nations experts as cruel and inhumane.The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place.President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment, and on his first day in office called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”

US consumer inflation picked up in line with analyst expectations last month, government data showed Tuesday, as policymakers try to gauge how President Donald Trump’s ever-growing list of tariffs is affecting the economy.Observers are expecting to learn more about the effects of Trump’s duties over the summer months, meaning June’s data marks the start in a series of closely-watched figures — particularly as officials mull changes to interest rates as well.The consumer price index (CPI) was up 2.7 percent from a year ago in June, rising from the 2.4 percent figure in May as energy costs rose, said the Department of Labor.Other areas that saw cost increases included household furnishings and apparel, both segments that experts are eyeing for signs of cost hikes after Trump’s sweeping tariffs this year.While Trump imposed a 10 percent tariff on almost all trading partners in April and separately slapped steeper duties on imports of steel, aluminum and autos, US officials have pushed back against warnings that these could spark price increases.Economists caution that tariff hikes could fuel inflation and weigh on economic growth, but US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has labeled such expectations “tariff derangement syndrome.”CPI rose 0.3 percent in June from the previous month, an uptick from the 0.1 percent increase in May as well.Excluding the volatile food and energy segments, CPI climbed 0.2 percent on-month, picking up from May too.Compared with a year ago, “core” CPI was up 2.9 percent in June.Even if headline inflation figures show no “meaningful” surge because of tariffs alone, Nationwide economist Oren Klachkin warned it may be too soon to see their full impact just yet.Businesses have been trying to hold off consumer price hikes through a range of actions, from eating into their own margins to trying to share costs with their suppliers, he said.But it remains to be seen how long they can do this.There could be a bigger impact over the summer, Klachkin added.For now, he is looking “under the surface” at components most exposed to Trump’s tariffs, such as furnishings, recreational goods and cellphones, to discern their effects.Besides steep tariffs that have already taken effect, Trump has also threatened even higher levels on dozens of key trading partners including the European Union, India, Japan and South Korea if they do not strike deals to avert these elevated levels.He has also opened doors to further levies on sector-specific imports ranging from semiconductors to pharmaceuticals, injecting more uncertainty in the global economy and worries of supply chain snags.

Computer drives containing unreleased music by US superstar Beyonce and plans related to her concerts were stolen last week in Atlanta, police said Monday, with a suspect still at large.The items were stolen from a rental car used by Beyonce’s choreographer and a dancer on July 8, two days before the pop icon kicked off the Atlanta leg of her “Cowboy Carter” tour, a police incident report said.Choreographer Christopher Grant, 37, told police that he returned to the car to find its rear-window smashed and their luggage stolen.Inside were multiple jump drives that “contained water marked music, some un-released music, footage plans for the show, and past and future set list (sic),” the report said.Also missing were an Apple MacBook, headphones and several items of luxury clothing.Police investigated an area where the MacBook and headphones had pinged their location, but the report did not mention any items being recovered.Atlanta Police said in an online statement that a warrant had been issued for an unnamed suspect’s arrest, but that the suspect remained at large.The “Cowboy Carter” tour kicked off in April after the global superstar took home her first “Album of the Year” Grammy for the 2024 album.The sweeping country-themed work saw Beyonce stake out musical territory in a different genre from much of her previous discography.The ambitious, historically rooted album also aimed to elevate and showcase the work of other Black artists in country music, whose rich contributions the industry has repeatedly sidelined.As her stadium tour to promote the album winds down, Beyonce ended her four-night stint in Atlanta on Monday, with two final performances set for late July in Las Vegas.

The Pentagon announced contracts on Monday with multiple leading US artificial intelligence firms including Elon Musk’s xAI, which has faced intense scrutiny in recent days over anti-Semitic posts by its Grok chatbot.Each of the contracts to xAI, Anthropic, Google and OpenAI have a ceiling value of $200 million, the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) said in a statement.The awards will enable the Department of Defense “to leverage the technology and talent of US frontier AI companies to develop agentic AI workflows across a variety of mission areas,” it said.The contract with xAI comes just days after the company was forced to apologize again for controversial posts by its Grok chatbot.After an update on July 7, the chatbot praised Adolf Hitler in some responses on the X social media platform, denounced “anti-white hate,” and described Jewish representation in Hollywood as “disproportionate.”xAI apologized for the extremist and offensive messages, and said it had corrected the instructions that led to the incidents.The release on Wednesday of Grok 4, the latest chatbot version, was almost met with scrutiny after it appeared to consult Musk’s positions on some questions it was asked before responding.The contract between xAI and the Department of Defense comes even as Musk and President Donald Trump have publicly feuded in recent weeks.Musk, a top backer of Trump’s most recent presidential campaign, was entrusted with managing the new agency known as DOGE to massively slash government spending under the current administration.After ending his assignment in May, the South African-born entrepreneur publicly criticized Trump’s major budget bill for increasing government debt. The president and the businessman engaged in heated exchanges on social media and in public statements before Musk apologized for some of his more combative messages.- ‘Critical national security needs’ -The government and the defense sector are considered a potential growth driver for AI giants.Musk’s xAI announced on Monday the launch of a “Grok for Government” service, following a similar initiative by OpenAI.In addition to the Pentagon contract, “every federal government department, agency, or office (can now) purchase xAI products” thanks to its inclusion on an official supplier list, xAI said.Meta meanwhile has partnered with the start-up Anduril to develop virtual reality headsets for soldiers and law enforcement.OpenAI had previously announced in June that it had secured a Defense Department contract with a ceiling of $200 million.”Establishing these partnerships will broaden DoD use of and experience in frontier AI capabilities and increase the ability of these companies to understand and address critical national security needs with the most advanced AI capabilities U.S. industry has to offer,” said the CDAO statement on Monday.

Al Tomson, mayor of a tiny town tucked away in an idyllic corner of the eastern United States, points to a spot on a map of his region.”The power plant would be there,” says the former military man, who is fighting against construction of the mysterious project on the outskirts of Davis, designed to power a vast data center.Tomson, whose town is about a three-hour drive from Washington and is home to 600 people, says the plant is being “crammed down our throats” by the state government. This fight in the woods of rural West Virginia is the latest example of the war between the US tech sector — and its rapidly rising need for energy to power the AI boom — and the communities it affects.In a scramble to quickly bring more data centers online, US cloud computing giants are now getting directly involved in energy production. And while they are using some renewable energy options and trying to revive nuclear power, they are also turning to fossil fuels like gas, which in the United States is relatively cheap.In neighboring Pennsylvania, a former coal plant will now run on gas to power a data center.In Georgia, xAI, the Elon Musk-owned company behind the Grok chatbot, directly connected 35 methane turbines to its servers, all without permits, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center NGO.Data centers’ share of US electricity demand is expected to rise from current levels of around five percent to between 6.7 percent and 12 percent by 2028, according to government estimates.- Powerlessness -The US electrical grid is facing demand growth “that we haven’t seen for more than a generation,” says Todd Snitchler, head of the Electric Power Supply Association, which represents many producers.To respond, they are acting on all fronts. Across the country, the retirement of old power plants is being postponed and additional turbines are being added while waiting for new plants to be built.But AI’s thirst for energy is such that more and more tech giants are building their own power plants off the grid — even if it means doing so against residents’ wishes.In Davis, the mayor and hundreds of his constituents have been fighting since April against Fundamental Data’s power plant project. For Mayor Tomson, the firm is just a “shell company” laying the early groundwork on behalf of an unidentified major tech company. Fundamental Data did not respond to multiple requests for comment from AFP.In the mayor’s office hangs a printed map showing that the gas turbines, with their toxic emissions, would be located about a mile from residents of this nature-blessed tourist town.But Tomson feels powerless. West Virginia recently adopted a law that, in order to attract billions of dollars in data center investment, prohibits local officials from taking measures opposing them.- Global competition -The frustration of Davis residents boiled over during a particularly tense public meeting at the end of June. For five hours, about 300 people attended the meeting with regulators responsible for approving an initial air quality permit, which is likely to be granted.Afterward, volunteers distributed “No data center complex” signs to install in people’s front yards. Some were already posted in shop windows.Davis’s residents say they just want to keep their corner of the Appalachians free from pollution — but there are powerful political and economic forces against them.”A failure to power the data centers needed to win the AI arms race… could result in adversary nations shaping digital norms and controlling digital infrastructure, thereby jeopardizing US economic and national security,” warned a recent US Department of Energy report.Some in Davis and West Virginia favor these projects, seeing them as an opportunity to re-industrialize an economically devastated region. The proposed plant would be built on the site of a former coal mine, for example.Since mining jobs left, “we need something here to keep our younger people,” said Charles Davis, who lives in nearby Thomas.Jojo Pregley, however, wants nothing to do with it. “A lot of people are battling cancer here,” she says, sitting on a bench in front of her house with her husband Pat, who spent 40 years working in the mines. “We don’t want more pollution from data centers or whatever else.”

The artificial intelligence industry is scrambling to reduce its massive energy consumption through better cooling systems, more efficient computer chips, and smarter programming — all while AI usage explodes worldwide.AI depends entirely on data centers, which could consume three percent of the world’s electricity by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. That’s double what they use today.Experts at McKinsey, a US consulting firm, describe a race to build enough data centers to keep up with AI’s rapid growth, while warning that the world is heading toward an electricity shortage.”There are several ways of solving the problem,” explained Mosharaf Chowdhury, a University of Michigan professor of computer science.Companies can either build more energy supply — which takes time and the AI giants are already scouring the globe to do — or figure out how to consume less energy for the same computing power.Chowdhury believes the challenge can be met with “clever” solutions at every level, from the physical hardware to the AI software itself.For example, his lab has developed algorithms that calculate exactly how much electricity each AI chip needs, reducing energy use by 20-30 percent.- ‘Clever’ solutions -Twenty years ago, operating a data center — encompassing cooling systems and other infrastructure — required as much energy as running the servers themselves. Today, operations use just 10 percent of what the servers consume, says Gareth Williams from consulting firm Arup. This is largely through this focus on energy efficiency.Many data centers now use AI-powered sensors to control temperature in specific zones rather than cooling entire buildings uniformly.This allows them to optimize water and electricity use in real-time, according to McKinsey’s Pankaj Sachdeva.For many, the game-changer will be liquid cooling, which replaces the roar of energy-hungry air conditioners with a coolant that circulates directly through the servers.”All the big players are looking at it,” Williams said.This matters because modern AI chips from companies like Nvidia consume 100 times more power than servers did two decades ago.Amazon’s world-leading cloud computing business, AWS, last week said it had developed its own liquid method to cool down Nvidia GPUs in its servers – – avoiding have to rebuild existing data centers.”There simply wouldn’t be enough liquid-cooling capacity to support our scale,” Dave Brown, vice president of compute and machine learning services at AWS, said in a YouTube video.- US vs China -For McKinsey’s Sachdeva, a reassuring factor is that each new generation of computer chips is more energy-efficient than the last.Research by Purdue University’s Yi Ding has shown that AI chips can last longer without losing performance.”But it’s hard to convince semiconductor companies to make less money” by encouraging customers to keep using the same equipment longer, Ding added.Yet even if more efficiency in chips and energy consumption is likely to make AI cheaper, it won’t reduce total energy consumption.”Energy consumption will keep rising,” Ding predicted, despite all efforts to limit it. “But maybe not as quickly.”In the United States, energy is now seen as key to keeping the country’s competitive edge over China in AI.In January, Chinese startup DeepSeek unveiled an AI model that performed as well as top US systems despite using less powerful chips — and by extension, less energy.DeepSeek’s engineers achieved this by programming their GPUs more precisely and skipping an energy-intensive training step that was previously considered essential.China is also feared to be leagues ahead of the US in available energy sources, including from renewables and nuclear.