Britain

Influencer Andrew Tate and brother arrested in Miami

BY HELEN ROWE

  • The Tate brothers now face 59 charges in total -- 42 against Andrew and 17 against Tristan, British authorities said on Sunday.
  • Radical social media influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan were on Sunday in custody in the US,  officials said, as Britain seeks their extradition to face new charges of rape, sex trafficking and assault.
  • The Tate brothers now face 59 charges in total -- 42 against Andrew and 17 against Tristan, British authorities said on Sunday.
Radical social media influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan were on Sunday in custody in the US,  officials said, as Britain seeks their extradition to face new charges of rape, sex trafficking and assault.
Karena Thomas, assistant chief constable of the UK's Bedfordshire Police, said the pair had been detained "pending ongoing legal proceedings."
The US Marshals Service confirmed the arrests. 
US news outlet TMZ posted video of law enforcement officers placing the self-professed misogynist and his younger sibling in handcuffs and escorting them into waiting vehicles in Miami on Saturday.
Asked by an onlooker if he had something to say, Tristan Tate did not respond, the footage posted on X showed.
UK prosecutors, who are now due to seek the brothers' extradition, said the arrests came after they brought forward 38 further charges against the pair.
The Tate brothers now face 59 charges in total -- 42 against Andrew and 17 against Tristan, British authorities said on Sunday.
"We have decided to prosecute Andrew and Tristan Tate for further offences including rape, arranging or facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation and offences relating to indecent images of a child," Malcolm McHaffie, head of the UK's Crown Prosecution Service's (CPS) Special Crime Division, said in a statement.
"The CPS has requested the extradition of the Tates from the US," he said, adding that the latest charges stem from receipt of new evidence from Bedfordshire Police that brings the total number of alleged victims in the Tates case to seven.
Earlier this year, police in Hertfordshire, north of London, said they were reopening a probe into rape and sexual assault allegations made by women against Andrew Tate between 2014 and 2015.
They also face separate rape and human trafficking allegations brought by different women and investigated by Bedfordshire Police, which covers their hometown of Luton, also north of London.
"There is no place for male violence against women and girls, and we will continue to work tirelessly to support victims and investigate all reports made to us," Bedfordshire Police's Thomas added.

'Face justice'

The Tate brothers are also accused of tax evasion and money laundering in the UK.
Their attorney, Joseph McBride, said in a press release that the brothers "are innocent."
"We are confident that once a competent judge sees the facts, and once the Department of Justice confronts this egregious abuse of its own authority, Andrew and Tristan Tate will walk free," McBride said.
The Tates are dual British-US citizens who have been avid supporters of US President Donald Trump. 
Lawyer Matt Jury, of McCue Jury & Partners who represent four alleged British victims of Andrew Tate, said Tate was "now facing the real prospect of extradition to the UK after years of public campaigning by the four British women I represent.
"They have spent years fighting for action to be taken, and I now urge the authorities to ensure this case proceeds as quickly as possible.
"Andrew and Tristan Tate are accused of some of the most serious offences, including multiple counts of rape and human trafficking. It is time they face justice," he was quoted by the PA news agency as saying.
In March 2025, the US state of Florida launched a criminal investigation against them. The status of that investigation is unclear.
Andrew Tate is one of the most prominent proponents of the so-called "manosphere" network of communities, many of them online, that focus on traditional masculinity, anti-feminism, and self-improvement.
He promotes his divisive views, often incorporating alpha-male and aggressively misogynistic themes, to millions on social media including 10.8 million followers on X.
In Romania, where they have been based in recent years, the Tates face allegations of trafficking minors, sexual intercourse with a minor and money laundering.
mlm-har/rh

smartphones

Pocket-size AI: Powerful phones star at China show

BY LUDOVIC EHRET, WITH LUNA LIN IN BEIJING

  • Initially, the prototype could follow simple voice commands to execute tasks across apps, including ordering food and comparing shopping prices.
  • Tech firms are racing to roll out advanced smartphones that use artificial intelligence to do everything from ordering food to composing messages upon a simple voice command.
  • Initially, the prototype could follow simple voice commands to execute tasks across apps, including ordering food and comparing shopping prices.
Tech firms are racing to roll out advanced smartphones that use artificial intelligence to do everything from ordering food to composing messages upon a simple voice command.
Wide adoption of phones running on so-called AI agents would be a revolution, but would also take control away from major apps, which aren't always happy about it.
At least three firm were showcasing so-called agentic phones at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai this weekend -- heralding what may be to come.
Smartphone maker Nubia unveiled its NaviX Ultra, a phone powered by Doubao, China's massively popular AI chatbot tool run by TikTok creator ByteDance.
"A new era of AI agent smartphones begins," Nubia said, sharing images of the handsets online.
A limited run of a prototype dubbed the "Doubao Phone" sold out fast in December.
Initially, the prototype could follow simple voice commands to execute tasks across apps, including ordering food and comparing shopping prices.
However, days after it was released, tech giants including Alibaba, Tencent and JD.com restricted the built-in assistant's access to their platforms.
The move effectively disabled the phone's AI agent, so ByteDance turned off the powerful tool in certain circumstances, including when payments were involved.

'Lose control'

Gaining broad access to apps owned by other companies is a sticking point for AI agent devices, said Kiranjeet Kaur, associate research director at US market intelligence firm IDC.
Platforms want to keep direct contact with their users, otherwise "they lose control to another party", she added.
"Agenting is everyone's dream, but we haven't reached there yet," as the performance of AI agent tools is still often patchy, Kaur said.
According to Chinese tech media, the NaviX Ultra does not attempt to force its way into apps, but rather seeks to collaborate with them.
The first-generation Doubao phone had been hobbled when major apps blocked unauthorised access.
AFP has contacted Nubia for comment.
Another manufacturer, Honor, showcased an AI system for its "Robot Phone", whose interactive camera flips up on a small robotic arm.
The company says its "companion-centric" device can interpret human gestures and bop to musical rhythms, as well as take selfies and steady videos.
An agent using several AI models, some co-developed with Alibaba, will be embedded in the robot phone when it goes on sale later this year, Honor told AFP.

'No clear winner'

Shanghai-based AI startup StepFun also unveiled an "AI agent-native smartphone", the STEPX Neo, ahead of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference.
StepFun's chairman Yin Qi said "deep partnerships" had been established with several major Chinese platforms, including Alipay and ride-hailing giant Didi, according to a sponsored article in state news agency Xinhua.
"Leveraging these services, the smartphone can provide one-stop support for travel bookings, everyday purchases, local services, office productivity and video editing," it said.
Outside China, big tech companies such as Google are busy infusing smartphones with increasingly advanced AI features such as the ability to book appointments.
US startup Brain Technologies launched an agentic "Natural AI Phone" which went on sale in Japan in April in partnership with mobile giant SoftBank Corp.
At a demonstration given to AFP in April, Brain Technologies' phone -- which connects with a handful of apps including social network LINE -- messaged a contact to apologise for being late on just an audio command, although it also often failed to carry out requests.
"There is no clear winner in this race yet, which is why it is currently quite a hot topic," said Marc Einstein of Counterpoint Research.
But in five or 10 years time, we won't be using apps on our phones "like we do today", he predicted.
"This will fundamentally change the digital economy and disrupt business models."
kaf-ehl-ll/jm

technology

Leather jacket worn by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang auctions for nearly $1 mn

  • Much like Apple founder Steve Jobs' penchant for black turtlenecks or Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg's endless wardrobe of gray T-shirts, Huang has made leather jackets part of his signature style, wearing one in nearly every public appearance -- including the cover of Time Magazine in 2021. 
  • A black leather jacket sported by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sold for $960,000 at a New York auction on Friday, 16 times higher than the estimated value of $60,000, according to Sotheby's. 
  • Much like Apple founder Steve Jobs' penchant for black turtlenecks or Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg's endless wardrobe of gray T-shirts, Huang has made leather jackets part of his signature style, wearing one in nearly every public appearance -- including the cover of Time Magazine in 2021. 
A black leather jacket sported by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sold for $960,000 at a New York auction on Friday, 16 times higher than the estimated value of $60,000, according to Sotheby's. 
The auctioneer said in a press release that 45 collectors bid on the Tom Ford jacket, with Sotheby's Head of Modern Collectibles Brahm Wachter calling it "an object so closely tied to one of the defining figures of the AI era." 
Much like Apple founder Steve Jobs' penchant for black turtlenecks or Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg's endless wardrobe of gray T-shirts, Huang has made leather jackets part of his signature style, wearing one in nearly every public appearance -- including the cover of Time Magazine in 2021. 
As head of Nvidia, he has seen the chipmaker grow to become the highest-valued publicly traded company in the world. 
Proceeds from the auction go to benefit the Edge Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching English and instructing professionals in Western business and educational methods.
pel/tu/sia/jgc/msp

horror

Horror film 'Obsession' is exploding cinema profit records

BY ADAM PLOWRIGHT

  • Both films are in the top 10 highest-grossing movies of 2026, underlining the appetite for horror among young audiences and starting what is set to be a new trend -- young social media creators moving into cinema.
  • Low-cost horror movie "Obsession" from first-time director Curry Barker is on track to become one of the most profitable films of all time, with the cinema sensation piling up global revenues of more than $400 million.
  • Both films are in the top 10 highest-grossing movies of 2026, underlining the appetite for horror among young audiences and starting what is set to be a new trend -- young social media creators moving into cinema.
Low-cost horror movie "Obsession" from first-time director Curry Barker is on track to become one of the most profitable films of all time, with the cinema sensation piling up global revenues of more than $400 million.
After premiering at the Toronto Film Festival last year and releasing at the beginning of May, it has become a word-of-mouth phenomenon over the last two months with fright-loving Gen Z audiences in particular.
Its success has catapulted 26-year-old Barker from a YouTube video creator into Hollywood's A-league with a first feature-length film that cost just $750,000 to $1 million to make.
"In terms of the ratio between the worldwide box office and the production budget, 'Obsession' is going to be the biggest success of all time, which is extraordinary," Bruce Nash, founder of industry-tracking website The Numbers, told AFP.
With ticket sales of around $430 million worldwide, it has already overtaken the 1999 supernatural thriller "The Blair Witch Project", which made around $250 million on a full budget of $600,000, according to Nash. 
In absolute terms, Hollywood mega-hits such as the "Avatar" films, "Frozen" or "Titanic" made more money but with blockbuster budgets several hundred times the one available to Barker. 
- Burgers to big screen - 
The Alabama-born director's success at the box office has surpassed that of the other remarkable horror hit of the year -- "Backrooms" by 20-year-old Kane Parsons, which has earned $360 million with a budget of around $10 million.
Both films are in the top 10 highest-grossing movies of 2026, underlining the appetite for horror among young audiences and starting what is set to be a new trend -- young social media creators moving into cinema.
"They're very encouraging for the future of cinema," Oscar-winning director Christopher Nolan told AFP and other entertainment journalists last week in Paris.  
Barker moved from his home town of Mobile to Los Angeles after finishing high school, initially studying film and hoping to make it as an actor. 
A few years ago, he was flipping burgers in L.A., working at Starbucks, and taking whatever jobs he could find in the film or TV industry to make ends meet.
The blonde-haired sunglasses collector scored a minor role in the series "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and took a position overseeing Covid safety protocols during the pandemic on another production.
All the while, he and creative partner Cooper Tomlinson were trialling content online, mixing comedy sketches on TikTok and Instagram with horror shorts such as "The Chair" on their YouTube channel "That's a Bad Idea".
"In that journey, you figure out timing, you figure out tricks like how to get someone's attention in the first three seconds," Barker told The Big Picture podcast recently. 
- Next projects - 
The "Obsession" plot is a simple but original idea from Barker: a young man uses a lucky charm known as the "One Wish Willow" to wish that his long-time friend and crush falls madly in love with him.
The violent and unsettling consequences deliver enough scares to thrill even a hardened horror fan, while raising questions around toxic relationships, dating culture and consent.
It was turned into a cash bonanza for Focus Features, part of Hollywood studio Universal, which bought the distribution rights for $15 million at the Toronto Film Festival last year.
Barker has several new projects already in the pipeline: a second feature, "Anything But Ghosts", in which he acts alongside Tomlinson, while he has also been tapped to direct a new version of the 1974 slasher classic "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." 
"I have a lot to weigh and that’s where the stress really comes from. I don’t know what to do next," he told The Hollywood Reporter.
adp-jt/phz

AI

China's Kimi K3 rattles US AI industry

  • Some experts compared the moment to early 2025, when another Chinese company called DeepSeek shocked markets by releasing a powerful AI model at a fraction of the usual cost. 
  • Kimi K3, a new artificial intelligence program from a Chinese startup called Moonshot AI, stunned the US tech industry on Friday, setting off fresh discussion over the China-US rivalry to dominate AI. The program was released Thursday and within hours hit the top spot on a widely watched ranking of AI coding tools called Arena, marking the first time a Chinese model had claimed the number one position on the list.
  • Some experts compared the moment to early 2025, when another Chinese company called DeepSeek shocked markets by releasing a powerful AI model at a fraction of the usual cost. 
Kimi K3, a new artificial intelligence program from a Chinese startup called Moonshot AI, stunned the US tech industry on Friday, setting off fresh discussion over the China-US rivalry to dominate AI.
The program was released Thursday and within hours hit the top spot on a widely watched ranking of AI coding tools called Arena, marking the first time a Chinese model had claimed the number one position on the list.
Investors in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street, as well as White House officials, worry that if China can build AI as good as America can, then US companies like OpenAI and Anthropic may struggle to keep charging high prices for their products.
Kimi K3's release follows that of other much-hyped Chinese AI models. Like most of China's offerings, it costs less and uses source code that programmers can customize.
Some experts compared the moment to early 2025, when another Chinese company called DeepSeek shocked markets by releasing a powerful AI model at a fraction of the usual cost. 
That episode briefly wiped hundreds of billions of dollars off the value of US tech companies.

'Reckoning'

Anastasios Angelopoulos, who runs the Arena ranking site, told the TITV podcast that Kimi K3 could force investors to rethink the whole AI industry, since businesses may prefer free Chinese programs they can customize on their own computers over paid American ones that require sharing data with outside companies.
He said the release will likely "cause a reckoning in the capital markets" since it "brings into question what the dominance will be" of US-based, closed-source models like those from OpenAI and Anthropic.
David Sacks, a venture capitalist who advises the White House on AI and is a vocal opponent of tech regulation, said on X that Kimi's success showed US dominance was under threat and that the technology should be allowed to develop unimpeded.
He argued that American politicians are slowing their country down by blocking new data centers, adding state-level rules and pushing for a federal agency to approve powerful AI models before they can be released.
"This is how you lose the AI race," Sacks wrote.
Dean Ball, who recently worked as an AI adviser in the White House and now works at OpenAI, said Kimi K3 was clearly a strong program and not just a copy of American models, a frequent criticism of Chinese AI products.
He predicted President Donald Trump's administration will eventually try to more explicitly discourage US companies from using Chinese AI -- not by outright banning it, but by warning that it contains hidden risks and that companies should not use them.
"You just create enough regulatory risk that every regulated enterprise backs off," he wrote on X.
For Gavin Baker, a prominent Silicon Valley investor, Kimi K3 is "potentially negative for Anthropic and OpenAI while being net positive for essentially every other company in the world."
arp/sst

Polymarket

France blocks access to Polymarket

  • France is one of a number of European countries that restrict or block access to online prediction markets such as Germany, Italy and Spain, according to the ANJ. France allows online sports betting. kap/rl/phz
  • France said Friday it was blocking access to the online prediction market Polymarket, as punters continued to make bets despite a ban already in place.
  • France is one of a number of European countries that restrict or block access to online prediction markets such as Germany, Italy and Spain, according to the ANJ. France allows online sports betting. kap/rl/phz
France said Friday it was blocking access to the online prediction market Polymarket, as punters continued to make bets despite a ban already in place.
The national gaming authority ANJ said Friday that Polymarket's webpage would be blocked on French territory, which adds to a November 2024 ban on financial transactions to the site.
Polymarket is one of a number of online prediction markets which allow people to bet on the outcome of future events.
The ANJ said the site's continued availability -- where betting odds on different events are updated in real time -- constituted advertising. 
"Advertising, by any means whatsoever, in favour of an unauthorised betting or gambling site is a criminal offence," the ANJ said, and noted the fines could reach 100,000 euros ($114,000).
The regulator said that despite the ban on transactions from French accounts, visits from French internet addresses to Polymarket's site have been rising, hitting 578,751 last month.
The betting markets have caused a number of problems.
France's weather agency Meteo-France filed a complaint in April after one of its weather probes was hacked in order to fix bets on Polymarkets.
A US soldier is facing federal charges for using classified information to bet on online prediction markets related to the US operation in January to capture former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. He allegedly made more than $400,000.
The White House said Thursday a teleprompter operator had been suspended over allegations he placed bets with a prediction market on the content of US President Donald Trump's speeches.
France is one of a number of European countries that restrict or block access to online prediction markets such as Germany, Italy and Spain, according to the ANJ.
France allows online sports betting.
kap/rl/phz

AI

Opposition to data centres grows in cramped urban Japan

BY KYOKO HASEGAWA

  • "As someone who lives next to the site, I'm most worried about a fire that could be triggered by the massive amount of batteries," said 69-year-old campaigner Yasuo Yamazaki.
  • The more Yoriko Kitagawa learns of a massive data centre to be built near her home in Hino on the outskirts of Tokyo, the more she worries.
  • "As someone who lives next to the site, I'm most worried about a fire that could be triggered by the massive amount of batteries," said 69-year-old campaigner Yasuo Yamazaki.
The more Yoriko Kitagawa learns of a massive data centre to be built near her home in Hino on the outskirts of Tokyo, the more she worries.
"This is a terrible plan," the 94-year-old told AFP.
The explosion in resource-hungry data centres -- housing the hardware "brains" of artificial intelligence -- is fuelling unease worldwide, with New York State and Australia the latest jurisdictions to announce new rules.
Opponents of data centres in the United States have called for a "national day of protest" on Saturday to "protect our hometowns, our wallets, and our way of life".
Japan, with some of the most densely populated cities among advanced economies -- 80 percent of the country is mountains -- has a particular problem: a shortage of suitable urban space to build the facilities.
One centre is even planned next to the famous Tokyo Tower.
In Hino, the height of two of the three planned buildings has been cut by a fifth to 63.5 metres (208 feet), but they still will tower over nearby houses, blocking the sun for some.
"As someone who lives next to the site, I'm most worried about a fire that could be triggered by the massive amount of batteries," said 69-year-old campaigner Yasuo Yamazaki.
"Heat from the data centre is also worrisome, as well as noise," he told AFP.
He also frets about a potential explosion due to a stockpile of fuel on site for a backup generator.
Developer Mitsui Fudosan plans a "green buffer zone" of up to 78 metres with trees and a stream, reducing the noise, the heat and the "oppressive feeling", said an official in charge of the project.
"One approach is to set the building back from the street and... to arrange greenery so that, at eye level, its presence doesn't feel so overwhelming," he told AFP.
"It may be difficult to have a 100-percent consensus with everyone, but we will do our best," he said, noting that the company has held regularly held meetings with residents.

 AI-friendly

Trillions of dollars are being spent on data centres to train and run AI models and provide cloud storage for humanity's zettabytes -- a unit equivalent to a trillion gigabytes -- of digital information.
Japan has big plans in the field, including for 10 million AI robots operating by 2040, aiming to become "the most AI-friendly country in the world".
It wants to develop its own sovereign AI models and infrastructure to avoid over-reliance on the United States and China, the sector's runaway leaders.
Partly to meet a projected increase in power demand from AI, Japan is moving to revive its nuclear power sector, 15 years after the Fukushima disaster.
But despite being a large and politically stable economy with good telecoms infrastructure, Japan has "important constraints", said Trung Ghi, energy and utilities consultant at Arthur D. Little.
"Suitable large-scale land near demand centres is limited, particularly because Japan is mountainous and major demand is concentrated around dense urban areas," Ghi told AFP.
Having data centres near end-users is important -- not least for the ultra-speed of response needed for financial trading, streaming or gaming.
According to real estate company JLL, around 90 percent of Japan's data centres are concentrated in the greater Tokyo and greater Osaka areas.
Electricity is key though, and over time the "winning locations" may not be closest to cities but where there is "reliable, affordable and increasingly low-carbon power at speed", said Ghi.
"Power, grid, cooling, land-use, fibre, regulation and community engagement need to be planned together," he said.

'Feeling of oppression'

Elsewhere, Tokyo commuter town Inzai already has at least 10 data centres including one used by Google, but residents have launched legal action against a proposed new facility.
The lawsuit says that locals' "peaceful daily existence... will be destroyed by violations of their right to sunlight, the ruin of the landscape, a feeling of oppression, noise, vibrations, hot air, traffic hazards, and large-scale construction work".
Contacted by AFP, the defendant Japan ERI, which granted the certificate for the construction plan, declined to comment.
Critics say Japan also differs from many other countries by having out-of-date building regulations that can classify data centres as offices and not industrial facilities.
Japanese law "is not catching up with the situation", said Satoshi Oikawa, a lawyer for Inzai's residents.
kh-stu/kaf/fox

AI

China's Moonshot AI chases 'DeepSeek moment' with much-hyped model

BY LUDOVIC EHRET WITH KATIE FORSTER IN TOKYO

  • Kimi K3's release follows that of other much-hyped Chinese AI models such as Zhipu AI's GLM-5.2.
  • A model released Friday by Chinese startup Moonshot AI has fuelled buzz around the country's tech prowess, as experts said it could rival some of the more advanced offerings from US labs.
  • Kimi K3's release follows that of other much-hyped Chinese AI models such as Zhipu AI's GLM-5.2.
A model released Friday by Chinese startup Moonshot AI has fuelled buzz around the country's tech prowess, as experts said it could rival some of the more advanced offerings from US labs.
Large language models underpin chatbots and other artificial intelligence tools with their ability to crunch huge amounts of digital data.
Moonshot AI's "Kimi K3" is one of several from China growing in global popularity thanks to their lower costs and source code that programmers can customise.
Soon after its launch, Kimi K3 had topped a leaderboard for AI coding run by a platform called Arena created by UC Berkeley researchers.
That drew excitement from industry insiders, with some evoking a 2025 release from China's DeepSeek that shook assumptions of US dominance in AI.
"Kimi K3 seems really good, closest to the frontier yet," Ethan Mollick, a University of Pennsylvania professor and a leading voice on AI, said on X.
But it "cannot write a good murder mystery (though neither can any other model). That remains the jaggedest of frontiers" of AI development, he said.
"Sensing a violent market reaction to KimiK3... similar to DeepSeek moment," tech writer and investor Kevin Xu wrote.
Beijng-based Moonshot AI said Kimi K3 was the world's first open-source model of its size.
The more internal variables, or parameters, a model has, the better it can handle complex requests, and Kimi K3 has around 2.8 trillion.
Leading US players Anthropic and OpenAI do not release details of how many parameters their top models have.

'Frontier-level'

"Kimi K3 demonstrated frontier-level performance across our evaluation suite, consistently outperforming other tested models," Moonshot AI said.
However, overall performance "still trails the most powerful proprietary models" from Anthropic and OpenAI, the company said.
Hussein Abbass, a computing professor at UNSW Canberra, said Kimi K3 appears to be good at coding, "but it is still unknown how competitive it is across the whole range of tasks expected from foundation models".
Should US rivals be concerned? "I wouldn't say they need to be worried. But they shouldn't be still," to maintain their edge, Abbass told AFP.
He added that AI performance is "not just about the model" but also the hardware that runs it, along with data centres and supply chains.
Arena ranked Kimi K3 ninth worldwide for text queries. When AFP tried Kimi K3, it generated ideas for tech reporting that compared favourably with responses from other chatbots.
Kimi K3's release follows that of other much-hyped Chinese AI models such as Zhipu AI's GLM-5.2.
It came during a major tech conference in Shanghai where President Xi Jinping on Friday urged international cooperation on AI governance.
The United States, which restricts the export to its rival of powerful microchips that can train and run AI, said earlier this year it was around eight months ahead of China in the strategic field.
But the Trump administration recently caused delays to the public release of top-end models from Anthropic and OpenAI, over concerns they could help hackers break into online systems.
"Post-Kimi K3 and open weights models getting closer to the frontier again, I wonder if Anthropic and OpenAI will be allowed to increase their release cadence by the government," Mollick wrote.
kaf/ami

AI

China's Xi says AI should not be dominated by one country

BY LUDOVIC EHRET

  • "AI development should not be a solo performance by a single country, but a symphony of international cooperation," Xi said at the opening of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference.
  • Artificial intelligence should not be dominated by a single country, China's President Xi Jinping said Friday at a major technology conference in Shanghai, urging international cooperation on its development.
  • "AI development should not be a solo performance by a single country, but a symphony of international cooperation," Xi said at the opening of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference.
Artificial intelligence should not be dominated by a single country, China's President Xi Jinping said Friday at a major technology conference in Shanghai, urging international cooperation on its development.
Chinese AI models are catching up to the most powerful US offerings and attracting global users with lower costs.
But how to govern the sector has become a key question, as concerns grow over military AI deployment or its use by hackers and terrorists.
"AI development should not be a solo performance by a single country, but a symphony of international cooperation," Xi said at the opening of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference.
"We should jointly oppose overstretching the national security concept in the field of AI or placing one country's security over that of others," Xi added.
The United States and European Union restrict tech exports to China over national security concerns, while tussles between Washington and American AI labs have raised the issue of who controls top technologies.
"China is trying to lead not only in terms of the technology development, but also in terms of AI governance," said Shengyun Lu, AI entrepreneur and founder of Shanghai consultancy Praxis Advisory.
Lu told AFP that in his view, AI should be regulated "like we regulate nuclear power".

'Under human control'

The four-day WAIC gathers more than 1,000 of China's tech firms, officials, researchers and industry figures.
Around 3,000 products are on display, from powerful semiconductor systems for AI computing to a smartphone that can autonomously operate apps.
But eyes were first on Xi's vision of how the world should handle the potential impacts of AI.
"We should put in place laws and regulations, technological monitoring, early warning, and emergency response systems, in order to... ensure AI is always under human control," Xi told the conference, calling for a "people-centric" approach.
On Thursday, foreign minister Wang Yi and representatives from 29 countries including Russia, Pakistan and Indonesia agreed to establish an intergovernmental AI cooperation group.
The World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, headquartered in Shanghai, aims to ensure the "healthy and orderly" development of AI, state media reported.
"I can understand Western countries are absent from this initiative, because Europe already has its own AI act and the United States is already defining their regulations," Lu said.
New York University business and technology professor Arun Sundararajan said "small glimmers of recent cooperation between Presidents Xi and Trump" were encouraging, but it was "hard to imagine there being a single approach to AI governance globally".

Mega AI consumption

Leaders including UN chief Antonio Guterres, Cambodia's Hun Manet and Thailand's Anutin Charnvirakul are attending WAIC, which showcases the cutting edge of Chinese tech.
Early Friday, the Beijing-based startup Moonshot AI released a powerful new flagship model, Kimi K3, which it said "demonstrated frontier-level performance".
Other highlights this year include MiniMax's M3 model and Huawei's Atlas 950 "supernode", an AI architecture for learning and reasoning.
"The main theme will be the transition from AI models to systems that can be deployed at scale" in everyday life, Poe Zhao of analysis publication Hello China Tech said.
Daily consumption in China of "tokens" -– the industry unit of AI usage -- has increased a thousandfold over the past two years, according to state media citing officials.
A growing number of companies abroad, like Siemens, are adopting Chinese open-source AI models, attracted by their performance, lower cost and ability to customise, in contrast to the closed systems of US giants such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
Both those US firms had to temporarily withhold the release of their latest AI models because of government concerns that they could help hackers break into critical online infrastructure.
"Models these days are controlled by very few," so more cooperative governance could expand access to them, 34-year-old Mike Luan, who works for an AI research lab, told AFP outside the WAIC venue.
ehl-kaf-dhw/jm

France

Petula Clark, 93, hopes real singers will survive the AI tide

BY ROBIN MILLARD

  • Clark said she hoped she had brought happiness to people throughout the decades.
  • Veteran British star Petula Clark hopes artificial intelligence will never be able to replace the warmth and emotion of a real singer.
  • Clark said she hoped she had brought happiness to people throughout the decades.
Veteran British star Petula Clark hopes artificial intelligence will never be able to replace the warmth and emotion of a real singer.
At 93, the "Downtown" legend still relishes the connection between audience and performer, and the humanity in delivering a vocal -- two things AI songs might eliminate.
"We're all very worried about that, and they're actually saying eventually AI will have emotion, and even that's a little worrying -- where do we go from there?" said Clark.
"For the future, it's a little puzzling, to say the least," she told AFP in an interview.
Asked if the human feel in a song was irreplaceable, she said: "We like to think so. Who knows? The way things are going, maybe everything is going to be replaced anyway. I hope not. I find the whole thing a bit scary.
"There's been a lot of electronic stuff, computers in studios for quite a few years, and we're OK, we're still here. But how much longer?"

London concert plans

Clark said her singing register was now lower, but the magic was still present.
"My voice, it has changed," she explained.
"But it hasn't changed in whatever it has: it's there. It's come down a little bit, but I kind of like it!"
"What I do is very personal, and it's mine; nobody can be me," she said.
"It comes from the heart."
Clark said there were plans for a concert in a London theatre, possibly later this year.
"It's going to be something very important for me, and very emotional too. It may be my last one; who knows?," she said.
"But I'm really looking forward to it, getting back to an audience. There's nothing quite like the communion with an audience."

Ear for melody

Clark met the French publicist Claude Wolff in 1957, they married in 1961 and in a very rare step for a British or US artist, she fully embraced French songs, becoming a major star in France too.
When seeking out new songs, Clark said it was "always the melody" that caught her ear, "because melody is international".
Indeed, her 1964 signature hit "Downtown", which sold millions and earned her a Grammy award, had no lyrics when she first heard composer Tony Hatch playing it on the piano.
"Some songs just have it. If we knew what it was, we'd all be singing them!" she said.
"We knew it was a good song, but we had no idea that it was a monster song.
"Some songs live on and live on."
Clark still listens to music every day -- mostly classical music and jazz.
"I like Adele very much. I think she's a wonderful singer, very good songwriter," she said.

'Is That You, Petula?'

After making her debut as child star on BBC wartime radio in 1942, Clark's career took many turns.
She starred in films alongside Alec Guinness, Fred Astaire and Peter O'Toole and appeared in musicals in New York and London.
"An Evening with Petula" in concert was the first colour transmission on BBC One television in 1969.
She has now written her autobiography, entitled "Is That You, Petula?" -- John Lennon's words when she visited his Montreal bed-in for peace in 1969, ending up on the single "Give Peace A Chance".
"It's been a long life, and a very exciting life, and a very sad life, and a very happy life," she said.
Clark has lived in Geneva since the mid-1960s and spoke to AFP at the Collonge Book Festival in the Genevan countryside.
Those queuing to meet her included a starstruck 21-year-old man clutching a 1980s vinyl album.
Clark said she hoped she had brought happiness to people throughout the decades.
"They've made me happy, too," she said.
rjm/nl/pdw

employment

Startups bet on AI -- and a leaner future

BY ALEX PIGMAN WITH THOMAS URBAIN IN NEW YORK

  • "We're still in a hypergrowth phase," Lauer said.
  • When Eric Lauer needs to hire at Giftory, the online gift-giving platform he runs, he's no longer looking for eager young coders fresh out of college.
  • "We're still in a hypergrowth phase," Lauer said.
When Eric Lauer needs to hire at Giftory, the online gift-giving platform he runs, he's no longer looking for eager young coders fresh out of college.
He wants "mid-career people who are lazy in a smart way" -- experienced developers he calls architects who know how to wield AI coding tools to multiply their output rather than write every line from scratch.
"To be an architect, you need that previous world experience, and you need to know all the workflows," Lauer told AFP. Candidates with "no knowledge whatsoever of the workflows" are "a lot less appealing for an organization like ours."
It is a calculus playing out across the tech industry as a new generation of AI-powered coding assistants transforms how software gets built.
Companies using tools like Anthropic's Claude Code are letting small teams build products that once required far larger workforces, but also squeezing out the entry-level jobs that young programmers have relied on to launch their careers.
These programs -- which also include OpenAI's Codex -- have completely flipped the script on programming, turning coders from line-by-line typists into "project managers" who can use AI to instantly write, test and fix software with just a simple text prompt.
The switch to AI coding is undeniable. Among developers at small startups surveyed by the industry newsletter The Pragmatic Engineer, 75 percent reported using Claude Code.
A quarter of startups in Y Combinator's Winter 2025 batch were built on code that was 95 percent AI-generated, according to Managing Partner Jared Friedman.

'Not pulling the trigger'

Lauer said Giftory's roughly 30 employees get a premium AI subscription costing about $200 a month -- "peanuts" stacked against an average salary of $100,000 a year, and cheap enough to make offshoring "uncompetitive."
Haitham Mengad, co-founder of Stems Labs, said he took a similar approach.
"We already had a pretty lean team and very talented engineers, so the approach I took was, let's do more with the people that we have."
Lindsay Euller, vice president of customer success at the software company Espresa, said her team's AI use is saving "millions of dollars a year."
"I think we'll get to a point where if I have to request headcount, I'll be asked, 'How are you optimizing AI?'" before any new hire is approved, Euller told AFP.
But the efficiency gains reshaping startups are casting a long shadow over the next generation of programmers.
A Stanford Digital Economy Lab study analyzing payroll data from millions of US workers found that employment among 22- to 25-year-olds in occupations most exposed to AI -- including software development -- declined nearly 20 percent from a late 2022 peak.
Harvard researchers analyzing resume and job posting data covering some 62 million US workers across 285,000 firms found that junior employment at companies adopting generative AI dropped roughly nine percent relative to non-adopters within six quarters -- even as senior employment kept rising.
"I think there's a lot of hesitation in hiring right now," said Ian Amit, CEO of the cybersecurity startup Gomboc AI.
"I'm hearing of a lot of companies that are interviewing multiple candidates across the board but are not pulling the trigger on actual hiring decisions."

'The dumbest thing'

Not everyone thinks squeezing out juniors is wise.
Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman has called the idea of replacing junior developers with AI "one of the dumbest things I've ever heard," warning that the industry risks denying itself the next generation of leaders.
Yet already computer science enrollment has begun to slide -- dropping six percent across the University of California system and falling at two-thirds of computing programs nationwide, according to the Computing Research Association.
For now, the economic logic pulling startups toward leaner teams shows no sign of easing.
"We're still in a hypergrowth phase," Lauer said. "And we always have the trade-off -- do we put more resources or do we put more people?"
In the heart of the tech sector, the answer is more AI and fewer people.
arp-tu/pnb/lkd

SpaceX

SpaceX abruptly scrubs Starship test flight

  • The flight will be the first after Musk's SpaceX went public on Wall Street in June, with a record initial public offering.
  • SpaceX on scrubbed on Thursday what was to be its first Starship flight since the company went public, abruptly calling it off just as the booster began to ignite.
  • The flight will be the first after Musk's SpaceX went public on Wall Street in June, with a record initial public offering.
SpaceX on scrubbed on Thursday what was to be its first Starship flight since the company went public, abruptly calling it off just as the booster began to ignite.
"Some of the engines didn't start, triggering an automatic launch abort. Now offloading propellant," company head Elon Musk said on X.
"To be confident of a good flight, 2 Raptors will be removed & replaced. Most probable launch timing is early next week," he added in a later post.
The flight was to be the mammoth rocket's 13th overall.
When it eventually takes off, the flight aims will be similar to those of a mostly successful voyage carried out in May, which debuted the latest edition of the powerful Starship, its third-generation model.
The goals of that test were essentially to demonstrate the new designs in flight.
But it was not without a few glitches, including engine issues with the Super Heavy booster that necessitated a crash into the Gulf of Mexico rather than a precision return.
The company said there have been "several modifications to hardware and software to address issues seen on the previous flight."
SpaceX will aspire the next time around to execute a launch, ascent, stage separation, boostback burn and landing burn of the booster offshore without any hiccups.
The upper stage will deploy 20 Starlink V3 satellites, and SpaceX said it will test out a relight of a Raptor engine in space.
It will also test upgrades to Starship's heat shield.
The flight will be the first after Musk's SpaceX went public on Wall Street in June, with a record initial public offering.
On Thursday, SpaceX stock closed at $131.11, below its IPO price of $135.
The rocket company has rapidly expanded its satellite internet service and voiced lofty ambitions for AI data centers in space.
There's a lot riding on SpaceX's progress: the company is under contract with NASA to produce a modified version of Starship to serve as a lunar landing system.
mdo/pnb/lkd/fox

elections

Fact Check: Trump's primetime speech rehashing election claims

BY BILL MCCARTHY

  • Such a conspiracy to create thousands of fake voters would require fabricated Social Security entries, residences and identification, all while evading detection, former Maricopa County recorder Stephen Richer wrote on X. - Venezuela - Trump claimed Venezuela's elections were rigged under president Nicolas Maduro -- and suggested US voting machines were vulnerable to similar manipulation.
  • US President Donald Trump resurrected long-debunked claims about fraud and foreign interference in the 2020 election, alleging in an address Thursday that China stole millions of voter files and suggesting Venezuela could manipulate American voting machines.
  • Such a conspiracy to create thousands of fake voters would require fabricated Social Security entries, residences and identification, all while evading detection, former Maricopa County recorder Stephen Richer wrote on X. - Venezuela - Trump claimed Venezuela's elections were rigged under president Nicolas Maduro -- and suggested US voting machines were vulnerable to similar manipulation.
US President Donald Trump resurrected long-debunked claims about fraud and foreign interference in the 2020 election, alleging in an address Thursday that China stole millions of voter files and suggesting Venezuela could manipulate American voting machines.
The White House declassified intelligence documents as Trump doubled down on his assertion that the election he lost to Joe Biden was "stolen," which has never been substantiated.
More than 60 lawsuits failed to uncover fraud capable of changing the 2020 result, while elections officials and members of Trump's own administration repeatedly rejected his claims.
Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, told AFP that Trump's speech consisted mostly of "recycled and debunked claims."
"What Trump did not do was even purport to show a single ineligible voter voted in the 2020 election, or that any voting machines were actually compromised," he wrote on his blog.
Here is a fact-check of some of Trump's claims:

Data compromised by China

Trump accused China of "the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China's illicit acquisition of 220 million US voter files."
He later claimed China attempted "to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden."
In the United States, however, voter files are largely matters of public record that states are required to maintain and which are regularly sold.
A declassified March 2021 report from the country's leading intelligence agencies reported "no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process."
The report said the agencies concluded with "high confidence" that Beijing "did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome."
A separate government assessment similarly determined that there was "no evidence that any foreign government-affiliated actor" compromised the election.
Such a conspiracy to create thousands of fake voters would require fabricated Social Security entries, residences and identification, all while evading detection, former Maricopa County recorder Stephen Richer wrote on X.

Venezuela

Trump claimed Venezuela's elections were rigged under president Nicolas Maduro -- and suggested US voting machines were vulnerable to similar manipulation.
The comments echoed conspiracy theories Trump allies pushed in 2020 alleging a Venezuelan plot to flip US votes through the elections software company Smartmatic.
Smartmatic -- whose technology was only deployed in a single uncontested county during the 2020 election -- later won settlements and defamation lawsuits over the false claims.
The documents the White House released Thursday say Venezuelan officials "developed sustained interest and likely some capability in manipulating electronic voting systems," but that the intelligence "did not definitively confirm that large-scale electronic fraud was successfully executed in specific Venezuelan elections."
They add that "neither Smartmatic nor the Venezuelan Government had the capability" to predictably "manipulate the outcome of an election outside of Venezuela."
"Nothing presented shows evidence of any vote manipulation," Charles Stewart, an elections expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told AFP. 

Noncitizen voters

Trump claimed hundreds of thousands of non-citizens were registered to vote.
Non-citizen voting is illegal and has been shown by both election audits and independent research to be exceedingly rare. Several safeguards prevent non-citizens from voting.
bmc/mlm

social

Central Asia's unbridled cosmetic surgery boom

BY ADINA ZHOROBEKOVA

  • Tergenbayeva, who had the failed breast surgery, is also urging others to be cautious.
  • After two pregnancies, Diana Tergenbayeva dreamed of a breast lift. 
  • Tergenbayeva, who had the failed breast surgery, is also urging others to be cautious.
After two pregnancies, Diana Tergenbayeva dreamed of a breast lift. 
Instead, she was left with severe swelling, an open wound and a legal dispute with the surgeon who performed her botched procedure in Kyrgyzstan.
With a swollen face and a gash under her breast where "the stitches came undone" three times, Tergenbayeva barely resembles herself in the pictures taken after the surgery that she showed to AFP.
"I couldn't open my eyes, my oxygen saturation and blood pressure had dropped," she said, after developing an angioedema -- a swelling in the under-skin tissue -- from the medication she received.
Her case is just one of an increasing number of failed -- sometimes fatal -- procedures in Central Asia, where cosmetic surgery is experiencing a social media-propelled boom.
Tergenbayeva's surgeon was detained in September for smuggling medications into the country.
Around 40 patients had lodged complaints.
But he has been released after his case was dismissed, and, to Tergenbayeva's horror, continues to practise. 
"He presents himself as the best surgeon in Kyrgyzstan, but he's just a kind of 'butcher' of Kyrgyzstan," she said.
He "should have been imprisoned", she added.
The surgeon did not respond to an AFP request for comment.

'Too much freedom'

Like many, Tergenbayeva, said she was "attracted by the beautiful photos on Instagram" of other cosmetic operations.
Official statistics are lacking, but media in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have reported an increasing number of victims.
The trend has empowered more women to speak up, especially after a Kazakh blogger with around a million Instagram followers died after undergoing liposuction in May.
Experts have attributed the cases to a lack of state regulation, the use of expired medicines and unqualified practitioners working illegally.
Authorities have acknowledged problems.
The Kyrgyz health ministry told AFP that the situation was "particularly worrying in Bishkek and Osh, where more than 1,300 companies are illegally carrying out their medical or pharmaceutical activities."
They have started inspections, leading to fines and closures of some premises that offer invasive procedures without proper permits or with outdated products. 
But the effectiveness of the interventions is patchy.
"Many beauticians often have a little too much freedom. They think they have learned and, without being surgeons, sometimes perform surgical procedures," Kyrgyz plastic surgeon Iskender Kachkinbayev told AFP.
"All medical interventions must take place in a medical setting, under no circumstances in an office," he said.
Despite the dangers, influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram or TikTok promote private clinics or beauty salons that experts say are dubious.
A quick social media video can result in "10 patients for consultations tomorrow," Kachkinbayev said, warning that the offers "can sometimes be a real scam."

'Think twice'

Jasmine Karipayeva, 27 from Kazakhstan, decided to have blepharoplasty -- surgery to remove skin from the eyelids -- after "coming across a video on TikTok", lured by low prices and pictures of professional-looking surgery.
"There is a quest for European standards. We have the impression that if we get our eyes done with open eyelids, they will look beautiful and natural," she told AFP when asked why she had undergone the procedure.
She immediately regretted the move.
"One eyelid is drooping, the other remains open. The doctor realised he had cut too deeply into one eye."
"No one can give me back my original appearance, because a lot of fat and skin have been removed," she said. 
She has decided not to go through the ordeal of a court battle against the doctor.
Kyrgyz nurse Oksana Tikhaya is another victim of a botched procedure.
An operation to life the 48-year-old's eyelid after a minor stroke left her with huge swelling that covered her eye.
"You couldn't even get your little finger in there. It's been a year and a half, but my eye still feels strained and I constantly want to force it open," she told AFP.
She said she "regrets not having consulted the reviews and having rushed to this surgeon".
Tergenbayeva, who had the failed breast surgery, is also urging others to be cautious.
"Women should think twice before succumbing to the charm of all these Instagram beauties and going under the knife."
aj-bk/emp/mmp/jc/pdw/cms

media

Netflix shares drop on growth worries

BY SARA BLOOMBERG

  • We estimate that we're only about 5 percent of TV view share globally," Netflix CFO Spencer Neumann said Thursday.
  • Netflix shares dropped as much as 8 percent Thursday after results underwhelmed investors already worried about slowing engagement at the streaming giant.
  • We estimate that we're only about 5 percent of TV view share globally," Netflix CFO Spencer Neumann said Thursday.
Netflix shares dropped as much as 8 percent Thursday after results underwhelmed investors already worried about slowing engagement at the streaming giant.
The Los Gatos, California-based company is facing fierce competition from YouTube, TikTok and other short-form content providers.
Netflix recorded $3.4 billion in net profit between April and June, an increase of more than 9 percent over the same period a year earlier.
Revenue came in at $12.56 billion, slightly below analyst projections.
That represented a 13.4 percent year-over-year increase -- the lowest growth rate in nearly three years.
The company anticipates a further slowdown in the third quarter, with growth of 11.7 percent, helping explain the jitters on Wall Street.
Netflix has not published an update on its subscriber count since the first quarter of 2025, deeming the once closely followed metric too volatile.
The platform nevertheless reported that subscribers spent 97 billion hours watching content in the first half of the year, a 2 percent increase over the same period the previous year.

'New content'

The company has been diversifying its content -- most recently with shorter-form video -- after expansions into live events, podcasts and gaming.
"We'll continue to expand the variety of our entertainment offering -- you'll see us launch new types of content like live, like video, podcast, cloud, TV games," Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said during a call with analysts Thursday afternoon.
"They're all doing different things in our portfolio to support different needs from (subscribers)," he said.
Netflix inked licensing deals in July with multiple media publishers for short-form video content as it seeks to compete with TikTok and YouTube.
Beginning August 3, Netflix subscribers in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand will start getting access to content as short as two minutes from Penske Media, BuzzFeed Studios, Conde Nast, Hearst Magazines and People Inc.
YouTube surpassed Netflix in average daily viewing time in 2025, according to research firm Digital i, cited by TechCrunch.
TikTok began closing the gap in 2024, when US adults were spending nearly as much time on the app as on Netflix, according to eMarketer data.
But Netflix insisted it still had room to expand.
"We're entertaining an audience approaching a billion people with still lots of room to grow into our addressable market on every measure ... We estimate that we're only about 5 percent of TV view share globally," Netflix CFO Spencer Neumann said Thursday.
In February, Netflix abandoned an effort to buy Warner Bros. Discovery after a tense bidding war against Paramount Skydance, which ultimately agreed to buy the entertainment company in a deal worth $110 billion, including debt.
In March, a live performance by K-pop group BTS drew more than 18 million viewers, Netflix said. Its hit animated series "KPop Demon Hunters" won an Oscar for best animated feature this year.
Netflix launched an ad-supported subscription tier in 2022 but does not offer a free option.
smb/arp

transport

Young British hackers jailed for London transport cyberattack

BY ALEXANDRA BACON

  • The pair pleaded guilty last month to hacking Transport for London's (TfL) network between August 31 and September 3 2024, gaining access to around seven million customers' names and contacts.
  • A UK court on Thursday jailed two young men for a 2024 cyberattack on London's public transport operator that exposed the details of millions of customers, in one of Britain's biggest data breaches.
  • The pair pleaded guilty last month to hacking Transport for London's (TfL) network between August 31 and September 3 2024, gaining access to around seven million customers' names and contacts.
A UK court on Thursday jailed two young men for a 2024 cyberattack on London's public transport operator that exposed the details of millions of customers, in one of Britain's biggest data breaches.
Thalha Jubair, 20, from east London, and 18-year-old Owen Flowers from England's West Midlands were each handed five-and-a-half-year sentences at London's Woolwich Crown Court.
The pair pleaded guilty last month to hacking Transport for London's (TfL) network between August 31 and September 3 2024, gaining access to around seven million customers' names and contacts.
Sentencing the men, judge Mark Turner said their actions had caused "very serious" disruption and were motivated primarily by "selfish bravado".
The attack did not affect transport on TfL's networks but knocked its services offline for three months, costing the organisation around £25 million ($33 million), according to the judge.
TfL, which had to reset the passwords of some 27,000 employees, estimated the attack cost £29 million in damages and £10 million in lost income.
With the level of control they achieved over multiple days in the system, prosecutors said the British pair "could have shut down TfL completely" and potentially caused "catastrophic damage".
Both men were linked to Scattered Spider, an online criminal collective believed to be behind a string of high-profile cyberattacks, including on British retailers Marks & Spencer and the Co-op.
Arrested in September 2025 following a National Crime Agency (NCA) investigation, the pair were described by prosecutors as "experienced and talented" hackers who had been known to police for years. 
Flowers also admitted to two counts of hacking into US-based organisations, Sutter Health and SSM Health Care Corporation.
When the NCA raided Flowers' home on September 6 2024 as part of their TfL investigation, they found him actively carrying out those attacks.
Jubair had previously been convicted as a juvenile over cyberattacks targeting US chipmaker Nvidia and admitted hacking the City of London Police force.

'Keys to the kingdom'

The pair gained access to the transport network using TfL employee credentials found on "russianmarket", a dark web marketplace for stolen logins, prosecutor Mark Fenhalls told the court on Wednesday.
They worked for 16 straight hours and throughout the night, communicating via messaging app Telegram, to breach the system after convincing the helpdesk to reset an employee password.
During the intrusion, the teenagers searched the network for the travel histories of celebrities and tried to access customers' payment information.
After gaining more privileges in the system over several days, the hackers effectively held "the keys to the kingdom", giving them "control over the whole network", Fenhalls said.
During the intrusion, Flowers told Jubair that "the government deserves to be hacked", the court heard, as TfL and authorities, who discovered the attack on September 1 2024, took days to regain control of the network.

Scattered Spider

The NCA's cybercrime boss Paul Foster said the conviction marked "the largest criminal prosecution of cyber offenders in UK history".
Scattered Spider is "responsible for some of the most serious and damaging cyber attacks affecting the UK and countries around the world," he said in comments made outside the court Wednesday.
"As a result of this investigation, that threat has been significantly disrupted and degraded," he added.
Jubair began hacking as a child, teaching himself to code when he was 10 before attracting the attention of older cybercriminals by age 14, the court heard.
His lawyer, Paul Keleher, told the court he had been groomed and exploited by online criminals while under 18 to conduct cyberattacks globally.
Judge Turner said the TfL attack showed he had moved from being exploited to becoming a perpetrator himself.
While remanded in custody, Flowers managed to gain access to online tools to attempt to hack into multiple international government domains.
ajb/bcp/phz

tech

EU tells Google to share search data, open Android to AI rivals

BY RAZIYE AKKOC

  • - Privacy question - The EU said sharing search data would "rebalance the playing field" but Google pushed back, saying the measures "introduce unprecedented risks to user privacy, device security, and national security".
  • The European Union demanded Thursday that Google share data with other search engines and open up its Android system to rival AI services, but the US giant said the measures would put privacy at risk.
  • - Privacy question - The EU said sharing search data would "rebalance the playing field" but Google pushed back, saying the measures "introduce unprecedented risks to user privacy, device security, and national security".
The European Union demanded Thursday that Google share data with other search engines and open up its Android system to rival AI services, but the US giant said the measures would put privacy at risk.
The move is the latest by Brussels against the behemoth as it seeks to flex its muscles over Big Tech.
The order was made under the EU's flagship Digital Markets Act (DMA), which forces the world's biggest tech firms to open to competition in a bid to give users more choice.
The DMA is the bete noire of US President Donald Trump's administration, which accuses Brussels of unfairly targeting American companies.
Brussels said Google must start sharing search data from January 2027 and users would start benefitting from the changes to Android from July 2027.
"Thanks to these measures we hope to see emerging alternatives to Google Search and Google's AI services, such as Gemini, and that users in the EU can enjoy greater choice of services," EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen said.
For example, the EU said Android phone users should be able to use their preferred AI chatbot via voice commands, similar to the "Hey Google" command.

Privacy question

The EU said sharing search data would "rebalance the playing field" but Google pushed back, saying the measures "introduce unprecedented risks to user privacy, device security, and national security".
But Google's head of global affairs Kent Walker said the EU moves risked "undermining vital privacy and security guardrails for millions of Europeans".
He said AI assistants already could access Android and by sharing search data, "Europeans' private searches would be exposed to unfamiliar companies, without adequate anonymisation of the data and without user knowledge or consent".
A senior European official insisted the EU "took integrity, security and privacy into utmost account", and Brussels said the decision would ensure anonymisation of search data.
The demand is legally binding as part of a procedure launched in January, but it is not a formal probe that could lead to fines.
The scrutiny of Google does not end there, however.
The EU could hit Google with a fine next week in a separate investigation under the DMA law, sources close to the matter told AFP, confirming a report in the Financial Times newspaper on Wednesday.
The EU has the right to slap fines of up to 10 percent of a company's total global turnover for violating the DMA.
Fines are nothing new for Google.
The EU hit the company with fines worth a total of 8.2 billion euros between 2017 and 2019 under different competition rules. And in September last year, Brussels imposed a 2.95 billion euro fine in a separate antitrust case.
raz/del/rl

earnings

Taiwan chipmaker TSMC to invest another US$100 bn in Arizona fabs

BY JOY CHIANG

  • - Increased capex - TSMC will spend an additional US$100 billion building fabs in Arizona, which would take the company's total investment plans in the United States to US$265 billion.
  • Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC will invest an additional US$100 billion in the US state of Arizona, the company said Thursday, as it reported a record quarterly net profit on the back of massive demand for AI hardware. 
  • - Increased capex - TSMC will spend an additional US$100 billion building fabs in Arizona, which would take the company's total investment plans in the United States to US$265 billion.
Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC will invest an additional US$100 billion in the US state of Arizona, the company said Thursday, as it reported a record quarterly net profit on the back of massive demand for AI hardware. 
The firm is the biggest contract maker of microchips used in everything from Apple phones to Nvidia processors and has been a major beneficiary of the global AI race.
Governments and tech giants are pouring huge sums into building data centres that can train and run AI tools such as chatbots, image generators and agents that can execute tasks.
This has turbocharged business for chipmakers such as TSMC, creating shortages and sending prices soaring.
"The AI megatrend continues to drive the need for more and more computation," chairman CC Wei told an earnings call.
"We now expect our full-year 2026 revenue growth to be slightly above 40 percent year-over-year in US dollar terms."
TSMC's net profit for April to June surged 77.4 percent year-on-year to NT$706.6 billion (US$22 billion), smashing analyst estimates of NT$624.4 billion.
The result also beat its previous quarterly record of NT$572.48 billion in the first three months of 2026.
Quarterly revenue rose 36 percent to NT$1.3 trillion.
Wei said TSMC was moving "as fast as possible" to increase its chipmaking capacity in Taiwan, Japan and the United States to try to catch up to customer demand.
"The demand and the supply, the gap is so big, so we are working very hard to narrow the gap," Wei said.

Increased capex

TSMC will spend an additional US$100 billion building fabs in Arizona, which would take the company's total investment plans in the United States to US$265 billion.
"This is to build several or more semiconductor logic wafer fabs for 2-nanometer and below technologies as well as advanced packaging fabs," Wei said.
Chief financial officer Wendell Huang said TSMC will increase its 2026 capital expenditure budget to between US$60 billion and $64 billion "as we continue to invest heavily to support our customers' growth".
"At TSMC, a higher level of capital expenditures is always correlated to higher growth opportunities in the following years," Huang said, adding the company did not expect "any bottlenecks to our capacity expansion plan".
Ahead of the results, Counterpoint Research senior analyst William Li said TSMC's surge in revenue showed "AI infrastructure investment remains exceptionally strong despite macro uncertainty."
"Demand for AI GPUs, AI ASICs and advanced packaging continues to exceed expectations," Li told AFP. 
Li said: "EUV (extreme ultra-violet lithography tools) supply constraints and overseas fab investments may limit capacity expansion and weigh on margins in the near term."
Concerns about overstretched valuations in the tech sector have fuelled fears of a market bubble, along with questions over when the eye-watering sums being spent on AI will reap returns.
But Omdia principal analyst Simon Chen said those fears were "overstated".
"The demand we see is structural, backed by massive, tangible capital expenditures from hyperscalers," Chen said.
amj/dan

earnings

Taiwan chipmaker TSMC reports record quarterly profit

  • This has turbocharged business for chipmakers such as TSMC, creating shortages and sending prices soaring.
  • Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC reported a record net profit for the second quarter on Thursday, fuelled by massive demand for artificial intelligence hardware. 
  • This has turbocharged business for chipmakers such as TSMC, creating shortages and sending prices soaring.
Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC reported a record net profit for the second quarter on Thursday, fuelled by massive demand for artificial intelligence hardware. 
TSMC, the biggest contract maker of microchips used in everything from Apple phones to Nvidia processors, has been a major beneficiary of the global AI race.
Governments and tech giants are pouring huge sums into building data centres that can train and run AI tools such as chatbots, image generators and agents that can execute tasks.
This has turbocharged business for chipmakers such as TSMC, creating shortages and sending prices soaring.
"The AI megatrend continues to drive the need for more and more computation," chairman CC Wei told an earnings call. 
TSMC's net profit for April to June surged 77.4 percent year-on-year to NT$706.6 billion (US$22 billion), smashing analyst estimates of NT$624.4 billion.
The result also beat its previous quarterly record of NT$572.48 billion in the first three months of 2026.
Quarterly revenue rose 36 percent to NT$1.3 trillion.
Ahead of the results, Counterpoint Research senior analyst William Li said TSMC's surge in revenue showed "AI infrastructure investment remains exceptionally strong despite macro uncertainty."
"Demand for AI GPUs, AI ASICs and advanced packaging continues to exceed expectations," Li told AFP. 
Li said "EUV (extreme ultra-violet lithography tools) supply constraints and overseas fab investments may limit capacity expansion and weigh on margins in the near term."
Concerns about overstretched valuations in the tech sector have fuelled fears of a market bubble, along with questions over when the eye-watering sums being spent on AI will reap returns.
But Omdia principal analyst Simon Chen said those fears were "overstated".
"The demand we see is structural, backed by massive, tangible capital expenditures from hyperscalers," Chen said.
amj/fox

tech

EU accepts X's plan to fix digital content violations

  • The fine was the first ever under the bloc's landmark Digital Services Act (DSA), which has come under fierce attack in the United States, including claims that it allows censorship.
  • The European Union announced Wednesday it had accepted a plan by Elon Musk's X social media platform to correct digital content violations that led to a 120-million-euro ($138-million) fine. 
  • The fine was the first ever under the bloc's landmark Digital Services Act (DSA), which has come under fierce attack in the United States, including claims that it allows censorship.
The European Union announced Wednesday it had accepted a plan by Elon Musk's X social media platform to correct digital content violations that led to a 120-million-euro ($138-million) fine. 
The European Commission imposed the penalty in December 2025 for breaching its transparency obligation, the deceptive design of its "blue checkmark" for supposedly verified accounts, and its failure to provide access to public data for researchers.
The fine was the first ever under the bloc's landmark Digital Services Act (DSA), which has come under fierce attack in the United States, including claims that it allows censorship.
X proposed measures that would boost access by researchers, including to ad content, and respond on a timely basis.
The platform has already changed its blue checkmarks from "verified" to "premium" users.
The measures to be undertaken by X are "an important step in the right direction", said Thomas Regnier, the European Commission's spokesman on digital issues.
"The approved measures will enable researchers, civil society and the general public to gain more transparency into X’s systems and the impact on users," he added.
X has six months to implement the measures, and they will be subject to an external and independent audit.
The agreement on the measures does not halt an appeal to the fine that X filed in February.
The US tech industry and the Trump administration have bristled at European efforts to regulate the sector.
US President Donald Trump called the X fine censorship.
A few weeks later, the US State Department announced sanctions on five individuals, including former EU commissioner Thierry Breton.
The European Commission has not fully completed the probe it opened in 2023 into X.
It also opened at the start of the year an investigation over AI chatbot Grok's generation of sexualised deepfake images of women and minors.
fpo/rl/phz