Evelyn Reynolds

FTC move is first official US enforcement ⁠action on rogue AI agents, following surge in incidents first reported in JulyThe US’s main trade regulator is conducting an industry-wide investigation ⁠into Anthropic, OpenAI and other ⁠AI labs ​to uncover the potential dangers their technology poses to consumers.The investigation by the Federal Trade Commission is the first official US enforcement ⁠action that delves into rogue AI agents, following a surge in incidents first reported in July that have stoked fears among the public that uncontrolled AI could one day ⁠harm humans. Continue reading… More

Trump criticized $2.4bn rehab amid attempts to pressure then Fed chair Jerome Powell into lowering interest ratesAn internal watchdog said the Federal Reserve mismanaged costs associated with a $2.4bn renovation of its Washington DC headquarters, but noted that no criminal violations occurred, according to a report released on Wednesday.For over a year, Donald Trump has centered his attacks against the Fed and former chair Jerome Powell around the renovations, including a months-long Department of Justice criminal investigation that was dropped in April. Continue reading… More

Late-night hosts weighed in on Trump’s relationship with tech leaders and the White House’s new AI-powered siteOn Tuesday night, late-night hosts discussed a Maha summit in Washington DC, the White House’s new AI-powered website and Donald Trump once again falling asleep on live TV. Continue reading… More

Steve Hilton’s long-shot campaign for governor is courting Golden state voters with unapologetically populist messageSteve Hilton stands almost no chance of becoming California’s next governor, but that isn’t stopping him from campaigning as though he was just one step away from pulling off the impossible.The former Downing Street political adviser and Fox News host refuses to be daunted by the rancid political environment for Republican candidates this year, or by opinion polls that tell him he is lagging 20 percentage points or more behind his Democratic rival, Xavier Becerra. Continue reading… More

Brazil will head to the polls on 4 October for the first vote in its presidential race. The incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is neck-and-neck with Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is in prison for plotting a military coup. There are fears and accusations that the US is interfering in the election, and these follow similar allegations in a string of elections across Latin America won by Donald Trump-backed candidates in what is being called ‘the orange wave’.The Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips, explains the tactics Trump and his administration have been using in recent months and what impact another Bolsonaro government could have on the region, and the world Continue reading… More

Arab communities on both sides of the border grapple with ongoing tensions as US-Canada relations continue to sourIn Dearborn, Michigan, home to the largest community of Arab Americans in the US, one industry has risen above all others in recent years: Yemeni cafes.At the forefront is Qahwah House, a powerhouse in the burgeoning Yemeni cafe world with 32 branches open across the country. Three of those are here in Dearborn, with more on the way, and they attract people from near and far. Continue reading… More

Cross-partisan support in Washington on issues like pesticides and food additives pose a threat to the industry’s bottom line Some of the biggest food and agriculture corporations in the US are funding a campaign that pays social media influencers to combat elements of Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Make America Healthy Again platform, according to an investigation by the Guardian and Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism project.The ascension of RFK Jr to secretary of health and human services has boosted his putative campaign to end chronic illness in the US, which he believes is primarily caused by processed foods and dyes, exposure to certain chemicals, and poor farming practices, along with an overuse of what he falsely claims are dangerous vaccines. The “Maha” movement blends long-running mainstream concerns about food and farm safety with conspiracy theories about everything from medicine to milk. A Maha “summit” in Washington this week will feature JD Vance and several members of Trump’s cabinet. Continue reading… More

After switching tactics, federal agents are detaining and deporting record numbers of people from the USWhen federal agents fatally shot the US citizen protesters Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis in January during the nation’s largest immigration-enforcement operation ever, it marked a turning point for the second Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.Donald Trump in his second term had sparked outrage and huge protests with federal immigration officers descending en masse on one Democratic-run city after another in what some leaders called militarized “invasions”. Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte, New Orleans, then Minneapolis saw lines of masked and armored officers swaggering into town to conduct street arrests, ambushes of day workers waiting in Home Depot car parks for hire, and neighborhood sweeps. Adults and kids were whisked off to detention and protests met with aggressive deployment of chemical spray, teargas, fists and batons. The killings in Minneapolis were the culmination of what appeared to many to be a federal shock force increasingly out of control while being defended by federal leaders – and public opinion broadly turned against this violence. Continue reading… More