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dive-bombing with Iranian-designed Shaheds from on high to avoid small arms fire dive-bombing with Iranian-designed Shaheds from on high to avoid small arms fire Russia’s Shaheds are starting to dive straight down from high altitudes to avoid gunfire. A Ukrainian air force spokesperson said the drones are diving down from about 2 kilometers in the sky. It’s an adaptation to Ukraine’s tactic of shooting down Shaheds with heavy machine guns. Russia’s growing reliance on mass attacks with Iranian Shaheds has given way to a new tactic, where Moscow sends the exploding drones hurtling down from high altitudes. “The current Russian tactic boils down to constantly changing UAV routes and trying to launch them at high altitudes — over 2 kilometers above the ground,” Yurii Ihnat, the lead spokesperson for Ukraine’s air force, told local media outlet RBC Ukraine in an article published on Tuesday. “Then they dive straight down at the target,” Ihnat added. While Ihnat didn’t specifically name the Shahed, the Iranian-designed munition has been Russia’s main drone for bombarding Ukrainian cities from afar. The spokesperson said high-altitude maneuvers mean the drones are more easily detected on radars but fly out of range of small arms fire. That’s a problem for part of Ukraine’s air defenses, which deploy mobile fire groups with vehicle-mounted heavy machine guns to shoot down Shaheds as they approach. Ukrainian units now say the one-way drones are flying higher and faster, making them far harder to hit. Some reported modifications to the Shahed have increased its known top speed from 115 to 180 miles per hour. As a result, one mobile fire group team leader told Business Insider’s Jake Epstein last week, Ukrainians must start relying more on shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles, also known as MANPADS. It’s all part of Russia’s strategy to use Shaheds to exhaust Ukraine’s air defenses, including Ukrainian electronic warfare and surface-to-air missiles. Launches of the Shahed have risen sharply over the last year, with Russia often sending hundreds at a target in one night to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses. They’re combined with waves of long-range missile strikes, making the night attacks even deadlier and more difficult to mitigate. Some of the launched Shaheds are cheaper versions without warheads that serve as decoys. Ihnat estimated to RBC Ukraine that for every 100 drones sent to Ukraine, about 40 are usually decoys. Shaheds are slower and typically less powerful than cruise or ballistic missiles, but they cost less, at about $20,000 to $50,000 per drone. Even lower-end air defense missiles, like the medium-range interceptor fired from the Soviet Buk-M1, can cost about $300,000 each. The US-made Patriot missile system, of which Ukraine is believed to have about six to eight, fires interceptors that can cost up to $4 million each. That cost disparity has fueled Moscow’s push to build Shaheds locally and send them in waves, often at civilian infrastructure. Analysts from the Center for Strategic & International Studies reported that the number of Shahed launches rose from an average of 130 a week in September to 1,100 weekly launches this spring. Meanwhile, Ukrainian intelligence said in February that Russia has begun developing a new version of the Shahed that can fly at speeds of up to 372 miles per hour and has a range of 1,550 miles. The Ukrainian and Russian defense ministries did not respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by ***. Read the original article on Business Insider Source link #divebombing #Iraniandesigned #Shaheds #high #avoid #small #arms #fire Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Auto giant Stellantis appoints Antonio Filosa as new CEO – CNBC Auto giant Stellantis appoints Antonio Filosa as new CEO – CNBC Auto giant Stellantis appoints Antonio Filosa as new CEO CNBCView Full Coverage on Google News Source link #Auto #giant #Stellantis #appoints #Antonio #Filosa #CEO #CNBC Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Senior police raise concern over early prisoner release plans Senior police raise concern over early prisoner release plans Senior police and security leaders have raised concerns about the government’s proposals to release some prisoners early. In a letter to the Ministry of Justice, first reported by the Times, that was sent before the announcement on sentencing changes last week, they said that based on their understanding the plans “could be of net detriment to public safety”. The government argued many of their concerns had been addressed. A source close to one of the signatories told the BBC it was sent not to oppose the government’s sentencing reforms or raise dissent. They insisted the letter was aimed at offering advice to support and shape the policy. The signatories included Sir Mark Rowley, the head of the Metropolitan Police; the deputy director-general of MI5; Graeme Biggar, the director-general of the National Crime Agency; Gavin Stephens, the chairman of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC); Vicki Evans, the national lead on counter-terror policing and Sacha Hatchett, the national lead on criminal justice at the NPCC. However the letter raises several concerns, including about the costs of electronic tagging and about repeat offenders avoiding jail if there is a move away from short sentences. “Even where that does not change their long-term behaviour, it provides the community with a sense of justice and temporary respite, stopping their offending during their prison term – a point often ignored in the current narrative on recidivism rates and short sentences,” they said. The letter argued against early releases for “high-risk offenders”, terrorists, and those jailed under national security legislation. “It is vital we retain sentencing that provides a strong deterrent to those who may be tempted to work on their behalf, and robust arrangements for managing these high-demand risk cohorts in prison and post-release,” they said. They wrote: “On the basis of what we understand at the moment, we are concerned that the proposals could be of net detriment to public safety and certainty to public confidence in policing and the criminal justice system. “We are not arguing for the status quo. But we have to ensure that out of court does not mean out of justice, and out of prison does not mean out of control.” The government argued the proposals once announced had addressed many of their concerns. Repeat offenders can still face short sentences under the changes. Terrorists will not be eligible for earlier release. And the probation service will be given up to £700m more by the end of the decade. A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “This government inherited prisons in crisis, close to collapse. We will never put the public at risk by running out of prison places again. “We are building new prisons, on track for 14,000 places by 2031 – the largest expansion since the Victorians. Our sentencing reforms will force prisoners to earn their way to release or face longer in jail for bad behaviour, while ensuring the most dangerous offenders can be kept off our streets. “We will also increase probation funding by up to £700m by 2028/29 to tag and monitor tens of thousands more offenders in the community.” Source link #Senior #police #raise #concern #early #prisoner #release #plans Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Gibb River Road flooded: Tourists embrace adventure amid Kimberley rain deluge Gibb River Road flooded: Tourists embrace adventure amid Kimberley rain deluge Tourists are hunkering down along the Gibb River Road after unseasonal heavy rainfall of up to 130mm over two days closed part of the popular dirt track. On Wednesday Main Roads WA advised the Gibb River Road between Mount Barnett and Kalumburu Road was closed because of flooding, making several crossings impassable. Meanwhile the section between the Kalumburu turn-off and Pentecost River was open, with caution for four-wheel-drives, buses and trucks up to 15 tonnes, with some water crossings reaching levels of around 300mm. Roads have been closed across the East Kimberley, including Parry Creek, Valentine Spring, King River and Kalumburu roads. At Kununurra, the Ivanhoe Crossing is also closed as water levels are flowing above the safety markers. The Bureau of Meteorology released the final floodwatch for the West Kimberley, Fitzroy River and desert catchments around midday on Wednesday. Widespread rainfalls of 80mm-100mm were recorded in the 48 hours to 9am on Wednesday, with some isolated totals reaching up to 130 mm. The rain band which passed through the Kimberley has now cleared. At Mt Barnett Roadhouse, about 20 travellers decided to camp and wait it out for the few days it would take for the Gibb River Road to dry out. Mt Barnett Roadhouse manager Matt Hawke said there was a lot of camaraderie among the travellers in the campground. “Everyone seems more than happy to go with the flow and enjoy that element of adventure,” he said. ”They went knowing that they were going to be in there for a few days and were pretty calm about it. A group of girls have just walked up from the campground, 7km in the mud, to come buy some sausage rolls, who are enjoying themselves,” he said. Mr Hawke said there was only one report of a tourist bus getting bogged, but besides that it was business as usual — even if it was quiet for this time of year. “The lights are on and we’re still here for everyone, making all our handmade food and fresh-baked sourdough bread and everything. So the people that can get to us are having a great time,” he said. Mr Hawke said he was advising tourists who rang about the road conditions to “sit tight until it dries out.” “Wherever you are, enjoy the peace and quiet,” he said. For the most up-to-date road advice, go to the Main Roads WA Travel Map at travelmap.mainroads.wa.gov.au/Home/Map. Source link #Gibb #River #Road #flooded #Tourists #embrace #adventure #Kimberley #rain #deluge Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Bill Gates Could Have Been World’s First Trillionaire If He Had Diamond-Handed His Microsoft Stock — But Instead, He’s Vowed To Not Die Rich Bill Gates Could Have Been World’s First Trillionaire If He Had Diamond-Handed His Microsoft Stock — But Instead, He’s Vowed To Not Die Rich Elon Musk may top today’s rich list, but if Bill Gates had diamond-handed his Microsoft stock instead of giving most of it away, we’d be looking at a very different kind of billionaire. A trillionaire, in fact. According to a Forbes video posted on YouTube this week, Gates would be worth around $1.2 trillion today — more than three times Musk’s net worth — if he’d never sold a single share or donated a dime. The clip estimates that he and Melinda French Gates could have had a combined fortune of $1.5 trillion, making them by far the wealthiest couple in modern history. Of course, that’s not what happened. Don’t Miss: The video highlights that since Microsoft’s 1986 IPO — where Gates held 49% of the company — he’s steadily trimmed his stake over the years while building one of the most generous philanthropic legacies in history. Today, he holds less than 1% of Microsoft stock, worth about $28 billion, while Melinda reportedly owns 380,000 shares worth roughly $170 million. Still, the hypothetical is staggering: if they’d never sold and reinvested dividends, the Gateses would own over 3.2 billion shares after stock splits, controlling about 43% of Microsoft — a stake valued at $1.4 trillion at today’s price. Toss in another $100 billion in post-tax dividends, and the cash pile alone would outsize most billionaire fortunes. This alternate reality has its roots in the late ’90s, when Wired magazine boldly predicted Gates would become the first trillionaire by 2005. At the time, it didn’t sound too far-fetched. By June 1999, Gates’ net worth had soared to $72.2 billion, growing at an eye-popping annual rate of 58.2% since the IPO. But instead of clinging to Microsoft shares, Gates diversified, offloaded, and doubled down on giving. Trending: Maker of the $60,000 foldable home has 3 factory buildings, 600+ houses built, and big plans to solve housing — this is your last chance to become an investor for $0.80 per share. In a blog post earlier this month, he reaffirmed his commitment to philanthropy, referencing Andrew Carnegie’s The Gospel of Wealth. “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced,” Carnegie wrote. Gates added, “People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them.” Source link #Bill #Gates #Worlds #Trillionaire #DiamondHanded #Microsoft #Stock #Hes #Vowed #Die #Rich Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

IMSI Design FloorPlan Pro 2025 review IMSI Design FloorPlan Pro 2025 review Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test. Home design apps and tools are plentiful these days, and you’ll find loads f options for designing interior and exterior spaces online, on your desktop, and on mobile devices. IMSI Design FloorPlan Pro offers high end options for your desktop. I was keen to see how this professional design tool compared to the best interior design software I’ve tested – especially considering the company behind it is also responsible for the excellent TurboCAD. FloorPlan Pro; Pricing & plans It’s not the cheapest 3D home design software out there, but it promises to offer a wealth of features, which you can try free for 15 days As for this writing, although FloorPlan Pro is available for both Macs and PCs, the former hasn’t been updated in years, and we’ve been told a brand new version is just round the corner. As such, we’ll be focusing our attention on the Windows version. You may like FloorPlan Pro is the high-end version of IMSI Design’s 3D home design family, the other two being “FloorPlan Deluxe”, and “FloorPlan Instant Architect”. As such it bears the highest price at just under US$280. With it, you’ll get over 1,000 3D interior design furnishings and materials, over 4,000 plants for landscaping, foundation and HVAC planning tools, advanced dimensioning tools, the ability to import your own materials, backgrounds and plants, and much more. This is a big software package and you may feel you need time to explore it and make sure it offers all the features you’re after. Thankfully, IMSI Design allow you to try their program free for 15 days. FloorPlan Pro: Quick Start The Quick Start section helps you design the overall structure of your buildings in minutes (Image credit: IMSI Design) A great way to quickly and easily create the basic outline of the building you’re about to create There’s little doubt that FloorPlan Pro is replete with powerful features, and is designed with someone who’s serious about 3D home design in mind. However, despite that, the software is also designed to be as approachable as possible, and this is made exceedingly clear from the outset, thanks to the Quick Start section, which greets you when you launch the software. This enables you to create the bare bones of your building in next to no time: to the right is a sidebar containing various generic rooms, such as a Kitchen, a Bedroom, a Garage, and so forth. Drag them onto your blank canvas (pretty much the rest of the interface), resize them, place them next to others, and within seconds, you’ll have created the outline of your building. Now, you can’t do much else with this section – you can’t even add windows or doors – that’s for later on – but it does let you get started at lightning speed. Once you’re happy with the results, click on ‘Continue’ to access the ‘proper’ interface. FloorPlan Pro: Interface The interface feels crowded, and a little dated, but everything you need is only a click away (Image credit: IMSI Design) The interface feels crowded as there are buttons and icons on every edge of the screen, but everything is well organised and it won’t take you long to figure out where everything is and make good use of the available tools FloorPlan Pro’s main interface is pretty busy, although well organised, despite the fact it looks antiquated and could do with a more modern lick of paint. You have alignment controls at the bottom, a series of cursors offering different functions to the left, and at the top, all the tools you need to design your home, organised by category, with ‘Floor’ being selected by default. That section contains the tools you need to build walls, add windows and doors, insert stairs, railings, columns, and more. Other categories allow you to work on the foundations, add a roof, design the electrics and plumbing, work on the ventilation and air conditioning, add a deck, landscape the outside, etc. It’s incredibly full featured. If you’re unsure what a tool does, just hover over it for a couple of seconds, and a detailed tooltip will appear telling you exactly what it does, and how to use it. Some even include a short animation to explain the concept more clearly. By default, you’ll be working in a traditional 2D view, but you can also add a 3D view to the mix, which you can explore in parallel. You can use it to navigate through your design, select items and such, but you cannot manipulate your work from there. When it comes to making alterations, the interface is very responsive: click on an object to select it, and drag it to move it around or resize it. We did notice however, that unlike other competing products, when you reposition a wall, adjoining walls aren’t resized and repositioned at the same time to accommodate that wall’s new position: you need to work on each in turn. It’s cumbersome if you’ve grown used to the other way of working, but it shouldn’t be a deal breaker, especially if you like more precise control over your project. FloorPlan Pro: Tools Hover over a tool for it to reveal what it does. Some even include a short animation to explain how they work (Image credit: IMSI Design) There’s a lot of tools at your disposal, and once you’re used to the interface’s layout, you’ll start enjoying the creation process As mentioned above, you can find the tools along the interface’s edges, and once you’ve gotten used to their location, accessing the right tool when you need it becomes second nature. In fact we found designing a project to be pretty easy considering the number of available options – not as easy as the “Quick Start” feature, mind, but still, it can become an immersive experience, as you focus on your design. Working primarily in 2D to create your project might be viewed as a drawback, but there’s an inherent simplicity to the concept that we ended up enjoying the process, occasionally switching to 3D to see how it was all shaping up. The biggest drawback though is that you need a large screen, especially with the 3D view activated, as it can overlap with the rest of the interface and all too easily gets in the way, especially when you’re furnishing your building. Altering the topography is done through the 3D view (Image credit: IMSI Design) When it comes to furnishings and materials, everything is located in a drop down menu to the right. All items are organised by category which you can explore, or just use the search field to quickly find what you’re looking for, which you then click and drag onto your design. We really liked the landscape feature, and can understand why FloorPlan Pro have so many available plants for you to populate your grounds with. The versatility is immense, even allowing you to create uneven ground, creating a much more realistic look for the surrounding area; you can even build a house, cut into a hill for instance, and turn the garden into a dense forest. The 3D view truly comes into its own when altering the landscape, as this is where you get to change the topography with the various available tools. Should I buy FloorPlan Pro? Image 1 of 3 FloorDesign Pro has thousands of objects you can use to furnish your home(Image credit: IMSI Design ) Use the 3D view primarily to explore your design(Image credit: IMSI Design ) The landscaping is a big part of this software, allowing you to create complex exteriors(Image credit: IMSI Design ) Buy it if… You’re looking for a professional-grade home design program, with a vast array of features and options, and don’t mind the somewhat dated interface. Don’t buy it if… You prefer creating, designing and altering your house in a 3D environment, or feel you need an interface that looks a little more modern. For more design essentials we tested the best landscape design software and the best architecture software. Source link #IMSI #Design #FloorPlan #Pro #review Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Elon Musk orders himself to return to the office Elon Musk orders himself to return to the office U.S. President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk in a Tesla Model S car, in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 11, 2025. Kevin Lamarque | Reuters Studies regarding the benefits of return-to-office mandates have been mixed. Some find that hybrid workers are as productive as on-site ones, while others conclude that in-person work cultivates mentorship and training. In some cases, however, the results of being physically in the office are unequivocal. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on X that he would be “spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms.” Investors appeared glad that Musk would be pivoting away from his involvement in politics to refocus on his companies, pushing up shares of the electric vehicle company nearly 7% Tuesday. Other tech stocks, such as AMD, Apple and Microsoft, also climbed, juiced by positive developments on the trade front. Apart from U.S. President Donald Trump’s Sunday pause on tariffs of 50% on the European Union, U.S. National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Tuesday that “we’ll probably see a few more deals even this week.” For the U.S. stock market to sustain its blazing start to the week, investors will be banking on Musk — and U.S. authorities — to continue their in-person work leading companies and negotiating trade deals with countries. What you need to know today S&P jumps to snap losing streakU.S. stocks popped Tuesday. The S&P 500 soared 2.05% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.78%, with both indexes snapping a four-day losing streak. The Nasdaq Composite surged 2.47%. Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed Wednesday. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.15% at 1:30 p.m. Singapore time, as the country’s consumer inflation rose a higher-than-expected 2.4% in April. On the flipside, Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.27% and South Korea’s Kospi climbed 1.15%. All eyes on Nvidia’s first-quarter earningsNvidia continues to see massive growth from sales of graphics processors. But with the Trump administration’s new restrictions on the chipmaker’s exports to China — which Nvidia says will cause it to take a $5.5 billion write-down on inventory — the mood heading into the chipmaker’s earnings report, out Wednesday, is different from that of recent quarters. Musk will be ‘super focused’ on workTesla shares jumped nearly 7% after CEO Elon Musk wrote in a post to his social media platform X that he will return to “spending 24/7 at work” and needs to be “super focused” on his companies. Musk’s involvement in politics, such as endorsing Germany’s far-right AfD Party, has affected Tesla’s reputation in Europe, causing April sales on the continent to plunge 49% year on year, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. Rising Japanese bond yields pose dangersJapan’s long-dated government bond yields have been moving higher, with the 40-year yield hitting an all-time high of 3.689% Thursday. The moves could spark a wave in which Japan’s investors suddenly move their capital from the U.S. back home, according to Macquarie analysts. The capital flight, in turn, could cause the yen to appreciate and unwind the carry trade, leading to a global sell-off reminiscent of that in August last year. U.S. consumer confidence in May soaredConsumer optimism in the U.S. was much better than expected in May, data from the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index showed. May’s reading came in at 98.0, far higher than the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 86.0. Much of the positive sentiment, according to board officials, came from developments in the U.S.-China trade impasse. May’s rebound followed five straight months of declines. [PRO] Stocks to be ‘rangebound’: JPMorganDespite the surge in stocks Tuesday, JPMorgan thinks the S&P 500 could “remain rangebound,” with those gains being short-lived because of two reasons. The bank recommends clients to buy call options on this index to hedge against potential downside. And finally… Artificial intelligence apps on a smartphone. Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images What chip shortage? 10 questions with AI startup unfazed by U.S.-China tensions Hearing from ******** businesses about how artificial intelligence can be applied gives rise to an understanding of it that is very different from how it’s commonly perceived. After a stint as a data scientist at Meta, Caltech alumnus Jerry Ye returned to China in 2017 at the behest of an investor, with the goal of starting a global AI company. The startup, Whale, sells AI software tools and related hardware to help retailers. CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng caught up with Ye in Beijing this week as he passed through the city, where he has a small team, and asked him about restrictions in AI development in China, new revenue streams and more. Source link #Elon #Musk #orders #return #office Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Super Flappy Golf flaps back into action early next month Super Flappy Golf flaps back into action early next month Global launch lands June 5th following a soft launch Flap, glide, dive, and race through 30 vibrant courses Collect and hatch custom Birdies with millions of potential combinations After a successful soft launch in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines, Super Flappy Golf is finally teeing off worldwide. Indie studio Noodlecake is bringing the chaos back to mobile with the third entry in its viral Flappy Golf series, landing on iOS and Android early next month. If you’ve missed the soft launch buzz, here’s what’s flapping. Super Flappy Golf builds on the wildly addictive formula that made the first two a hit, racking up over 14 million downloads. It keeps the signature two-button simplicity but adds a lot more feathers, literally. Looking for something similar to do? Here’s a list of some of the best multiplayer games to play on Android right now! The revamped Birdie collection system lets you hatch wild new characters with distinct traits, bringing together style and strategy in a way that’s fresh but still familiar. The launch version comes packed with 30 colourful courses, a polished new look, and a suite of new features. Glide and dive mechanics add depth (and chaos) to your flight path, especially in the frantic online multiplayer where up to eight players race to the cup. Daily quests, achievements, and the Lowest Flaps mode reward precision, while refined Birdie traits offer plenty of reasons to keep flapping. Since February, Noodlecake has fine-tuned the experience with updated birdies, refined trait mechanics, and added polish across the board. The return of online multiplayer brings back that fast-paced, unpredictable energy fans loved in Golf Blitz, the studio’s last in-house title from 2019. There’s no shortage of flair, either; eggs come in multiple rarities and hatching a flashy or freakish Birdie is half the fun. With millions of potential combinations, you never know what you’ll unlock next. Super Flappy Golf will release on iOS and Android on June 5th. Visit the official website for more information. Source link #Super #Flappy #Golf #flaps #action #early #month Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

New student visas paused as State Dept. plans tougher social media review – The Washington Post New student visas paused as State Dept. plans tougher social media review – The Washington Post New student visas paused as State Dept. plans tougher social media review The Washington PostUS halts student visa appointments and plans expanded social media vetting BBCHong Kong students aiming for US universities in limbo as visa interviews halted South China Morning PostTrump Administration Halts Interviews for Student and Exchange Visas The New York TimesTrump team pauses new student visa interviews as it weighs expanding social media vetting Politico Source link #student #visas #paused #State #Dept #plans #tougher #social #media #review #Washington #Post Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Dunk City Dynasty scores one million users in under a week Dunk City Dynasty scores one million users in under a week Dunk City Dynasty racks up over 1 million users within days of global launch Hits No. 1 on the US Apple download charts and dominates Southeast Asia Backed by NBA stars and fan-driven hype Dunk City Dynasty is already making noise just days after launch. The officially licensed NBA streetball game from NetEase has slammed its way to the top of the US App Store and grabbed the No. 1 spot across Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia. More than one million users have hit the court so far, turning the global launch into a big moment for the series. Community growth is just as quick; over 50,000 players have already joined the conversation across Discord and social platforms. A big part of that hype comes from the names backing it. Utah Jazz guard Jordan Clarkson is serving as brand ambassador, while Kendrick Perkins brings his voice courtside as the first in-game guest commentator. Their support, along with posts from the official NBA social media accounts, has helped push Dunk City Dynasty into the spotlight. If you’re unfamiliar, Dunk City Dynasty is a fast-paced mobile game which combines 5v5 streetball action with familiar NBA faces like Stephen Curry and Giannis Antetokounmpo. You’ll also find team legends from the Lakers, Celtics, Heat, and more. Matches are quick, built for speed and to win. Every round is a race to 11, so go out there and be flashy with the right team. Before you go on, here’s a list of the best sports games to play on Android right now! You can also jump into ranked matchups or team up with friends any time, day or night. And to top it off, it leans hard into customisation, letting you show off fresh looks with gear drops that bring just as much style as skill. Ready to get in on the action? Download Dunk City Dynasty now by clicking on your preferred link below. It is free-to-play with in-app purchases. Visit the official website for more information. Source link #Dunk #City #Dynasty #scores #million #users #week Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Motorola Razr 60 With MediaTek Dimensity 7400X SoC, 3.6-Inch pOLED Cover Screen Launched in India Motorola Razr 60 With MediaTek Dimensity 7400X SoC, 3.6-Inch pOLED Cover Screen Launched in India Motorola Razr 60 was launched in India on Wednesday. The clamshell foldable smartphone comes with a 6.9-inch pOLED main display and a 3.6-inch pOLED cover screen. It is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 7400X chipset and packs a 4,500mAh battery with 30W TurboPower charging support. The phone is equipped with a 50-megapixel dual rear camera unit and a 32-megapixel selfie shooter. It has an IP48-rated dust and water-resistant build and Corning Gorilla Glass Victus outer display protection. It joins the Razr 60 Ultra variant, which was unveiled in India earlier this month. Motorola Razr 60 Price in India, Availability Motorola Razr 60 price in India is set at Rs. 49,999 for the sole 8GB + 256GB RAM and storage configuration. The phone will be available for purchase in the country starting 12pm IST on June 4 via Flipkart, the Motorola India website, and select retail stores. The handset is offered in three colour options with three distinct finishes. The Pantone Gibraltar Sea option has a fabric-like finish, while the Pantone Lightest Sky and Pantone Spring Bud shades come with marble-like and vegan leather rear panels, respectively. Motorola Razr 60 Features, Specifications The Motorola Razr 60 sports a 6.9-inch full HD+ (1,080×2,640 pixels) pOLED LTPO main display with up to 120Hz refresh rate, up to 3,000 nits peak brightness, 120 percent DCI-P3 colour gamut coverage, and HDR10+ support. The 3.63-inch pOLED cover display has a 1,056×1,066 pixels resolution, up to 90Hz refresh rate, up to 1,700 nits peak brightness, HDR10 support, and Corning Gorilla Glass Victus protection. Motorola Razr 60 comes equipped with a MediaTek Dimensity 7400X chipset coupled with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB of UFS 2.2 onboard storage. It ships with Android 15-based Hello UI skin on top. For optics, the Motorola Razr 60 carries a 50-megapixel primary outer camera with optical image stabilisation (OIS) support, an f/1.7 aperture, and Quad Pixel technology alongside a 13-megapixel ultrawide shooter with an f/2.2 aperture. The clamshell foldable has a 32-megapixel front camera sensor with an f/2.4 aperture placed at the top of the inner display. It is equipped with the Moto AI suite, which includes AI-backed imaging and productivity tools. The Motorola Razr 60 packs a 4,500mAh battery with 30W TurboCharging support. It has a side-mounted fingerprint sensor for security. The handset has an IP48 rating for dust and water resistance. Connectivity options include 5G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.4, GPS, NFC, and a USB Type-C port. Unfolded, the smartphone measures 73.99×171.30×7.25mm in size and weighs about 188g. Affiliate links may be automatically generated – see our ethics statement for details. Source link #Motorola #Razr #MediaTek #Dimensity #7400X #SoC #3.6Inch #pOLED #Cover #Screen #Launched #India Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Thames Water fined £122.7m in biggest ever penalty Thames Water fined £122.7m in biggest ever penalty The company has been fined for breaching rules on wastewater and dividend payments. Source link #Thames #Water #fined #122.7m #biggest #penalty Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Pokémon Go’s Delightful Days Battle League brings new cups, big rewards, and bonus stardust weekends Pokémon Go’s Delightful Days Battle League brings new cups, big rewards, and bonus stardust weekends New Go Battle League season begins June 3rd This time you’ll be able to enjoy 4x Stardust weekends Lots of rare encounters throughout the season The Delightful Days season of the Go Battle League in Pokémon Go kicks off June 3rd, and it’s shaping up to be anything but quiet. With an all-new seasonal format running through September 2nd, you’re looking at 13 weeks of rotating cups, rare Pokémon encounters, and some serious Stardust incentives for battlers ready to grind. Rank resets and rewards drop on day one on the Go Battle League: Delightful Days, and the schedule wastes no time, opening with Great League and Sunshine Cup before cycling through Ultra, Master, and several specialty formats. Here’s a list of redeemable Pokémon Go codes for a bunch of freebies! Expect a heavy focus on Stardust, with 4x Stardust from win rewards returning across multiple weeks, and again during special three-league rotation periods throughout the season. The spotlight event, Go Battle Weekend: Delightful Days, runs August 15th-17th and cranks things up even further with 100 daily battles, a wide reward pool, and a limited-time Timed Research that includes exclusive avatar items inspired by a top Battle Tower trainer. On the reward side, high-rank battlers can chase encounters with Frigibax, Morpeko, Dreepy, and a shot at Pikachu Libre. Mienfoo, Vullaby, and others round out the encounter pool, with Shiny chances in play for a handful of key species. On top of that, a free Timed Research Pass tracks victories through the season, granting rewards like Elite TMs and Rare Candy XL at 400 and 500 wins. The Cup lineup includes returning favourites like Sunshine and Fossil Cup, along with regional specialties like the Hisui Cup and the CP-capped Element Cup: Little Edition. Each brings its own restrictions on CP and typing, keeping the meta fresh and forcing you to stay sharp week to week. Download Pokémon Go now and get ready for an epic season of battle. Source link #Pokémon #Gos #Delightful #Days #Battle #League #brings #cups #big #rewards #bonus #stardust #weekends Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Big Hits: White Cliff, Benz Mining and Koonenberry Gold Big Hits: White Cliff, Benz Mining and Koonenberry Gold Bulls N’ Bears Big Hits examines notable drill intercepts recently revealed on the ASX, including White Cliff Minerals’ 58-metre hit at 3.08 per cent copper and 13.3 grams per tonne (g/t) silver at its Rae project in Canada. Other interesting drill hits were reported from Benz Mining Corporation’s Glenburgh project in Western Australia’s northwest and Koonenberry Gold’s Enmore gold project in New South Wales. Let’s dive in. White Cliff Minerals (ASX: WCN) Rae copper project, Nunavut, Canada. Hit: 58m assaying 3.08 per cent copper and 13.3g/t silver White Cliff Minerals recently reported a reverse circulation drill intercept of 58m assaying 3.08 per cent copper and 13.3g/t silver from 52m, including a high-grade 18m run assaying 5.21 per cent copper and 22.33g/t silver from 69m. The drill hole was the first in White Cliff’s exploration drilling of its Danvers district, which forms part of the company’s 1228-square-kilometre Rae copper project in Nunavut, Canada. Over the subsequent two weeks, the company followed up the impressive results with two further outstanding runs in its second and third holes. White Cliff’s maiden drilling program was intended to be about orientation and scout exploration to identify mineralisation at Danvers, so having its first assay results returned with a nearly 60m intercept of more than 3 per cent copper was an outstanding beginning. Six days later, White Cliff reported another outstanding drill run of 175m assaying 2.5 per cent copper and 8.66g/t silver from 7.6m depth, including 14m going 7.55 per cent copper and 25.8g/t silver from 138m. The last 60m of the second hole averaged a stunning 3.9 per cent copper and 14.96g/t silver to its final depth of 182.88m, where it ended in mineralisation. The hole’s bottom 1.5m drilled so far, graded 4.46 per cent copper and 11.58g/t silver and remains open at depth. Samples from that hole were assigned assay priority due to the abundance of visible sulphides in the drill chips. Management says the hole’s outstanding results justify the company’s confidence in its initial visual evidence. White Cliff believes the drill hole ranks among the most significant copper intersections globally within the past 50 years and comfortably sits within the top 10 reported “grade-metre” copper results. It said the company’s improving geological understanding of the Danvers exploration area points to a mineralised system extending from surface to more than 175m vertical depth and potentially for up to 7km of strike to the northeast and southwest. Based on the early results, White Cliffs has high hopes it will be the vanguard of more big hits. As if on cue, White Cliff then unveiled an intercept in a third hole of 90m at 4 per cent copper and 7.5g/t silver from surface, including a high-grade intercept of 18m assaying 6.5 per cent copper and 11.4g/t silver from 26m. That primary intercept also included a 1.52m run averaging a remarkable 19.45 per cent copper and 34.1g/t silver from 30m and another high-grade run of 14m going 7.7 per cent copper and 16.2g/t silver from 61m. The third hole was designed to test the thickness of the mineralisation and was drilled towards the southeast, perpendicular to the strike of the copper-rich breccias. Results confirm continuity of high-grade mineralisation reported in the headline hole. White Cliff says the drilling program to date has enabled it to dial in on the high-grade copper zones. It will return to site shortly to drill out the new mineralisation as it steps out along a 9.5-kilometre faulted structure. Even without other supporting intercepts, the second and third holes at Danvers confirm significant continuity and grade across a large copper-rich breccia vein that averages about 3-4 per cent copper, imparting real significance to the potential of all the vein-hoisted breccias in the company’s tenure. Management says it is confident it will deliver a material maiden exploration target at Danvers after completing the next round of drilling, and it expects the high-grade core at Danvers will significantly add to the target’s overall economics. Last week, White Cliff announced it has received firm commitments to raise $14.4 million to drill its Rae copper project through the year. The capital raise was significantly oversubscribed, with White Cliff receiving investments from several new ***********, United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Singaporean financial institutions, along with its existing institutional and sophisticated shareholders. The company says the funds will be used to expand and accelerate its drilling and exploration activities at Rae, with drilling set to recommence from mid-July. Camera IconBenz Mining’s Glenburgh project area contains an extensive outcrop that offers clues to the local structural architecture, such as the fold style, orientation and fabric, which support Benz’ targeting model. Credit: Supplied Benz Mining Corporation (ASX: BNZ) Zone 126 Glenburgh project 270km southeast of Carnarvon, WA Hit: 2m at 6.8g/t gold from 295m Benz Mining’s recent reverse circulation drilling of its Zone 126 target at the company’s Glenburgh project intersected 2m of high-grade gold mineralisation averaging 6.8g/t gold from 295m downhole depth. The intercept forms part of a tantalising 102m run between 294 and 396m deep, averaging 0.32g/t gold, including 33m assaying 0.67g/t gold from 295m. The headline hole is one of three additional holes put into the company’s Zone 126 area as part of Benz’ maiden drilling at the project. The program targeted depth repeats or extensions of Zone 126, an area of high-grade gold mineralisation discovered by previous owners Gascoyne Resources and Helix Resources. Drilling results from Zone 126 when Benz bought the project late last year included 10m at 11.6g/t gold, 8m at 11.6g/t, 24m at 9.1 g/t, 14m at 8.9 g/t,12m at 8.1g/t and 28m at 5g/t gold from near-surface to about 290m vertical depth. Benz’ review of historical data and its reconnaissance mapping led it to propose a new model of a shallow plunging fold control on mineralisation within the gneissic rocks at Glenburgh. The concept was successfully tested when the company drilled the northeast-plunging continuity of the historic Zone 126 over the following five months. Significant intercepts from that work include 11m at 19.9g/t gold, 4m at 12.2g/t, 5m at 10.2g/t, 8m at 5.6g/t and 12m at 2.6g/t gold. The results support Benz’ new model and define a second high-grade en echelon gold lens about 25m to 50m northeast of and 80m down-plunge from Zone 126. At this stage, the new zone is interpreted to extend a vertical distance about 170m to 420m below surface. Based on these results and the position of the second lens, the company’s latest modelling now points to a possible third lens that might exist further to the northeast and down-plunge from the second lens. The tentatively interpreted third lens is currently modelled to sit about 220m to 520m below surface and between about 25m to 50m down-dip from the second lens. The ongoing modelling appears to have been validated, with Benz saying the position of its most recent headline hit is consistent with its interpretation of a likely third high-grade gold lens. These multiple gold zones would never have been explored without the benefit of a new structural model, with Benz saying this is the first time drilling in the area has stepped away and down-plunge from the near-surface gold anomalism. Benz figures the headline 2m at 6.8g/t gold hit lies on the upper and outer margin of the third lens, which could thicken towards its core, as observed at Zone 126 and in the second lens. The company sees the headline result as further validating its exploration model and adding impetus to its plan for a new round of drilling to confirm and flesh out the third lens. While at this stage the headline hole only hints at the existence of a third lens, the model suggests that mineralisation potential remains open down-plunge and that the proposed drilling stands a good chance of defining it more broadly. Two other step-back holes have also targeted the mineralised “gap zone” between the company’s nearby Icon and Apollo deposits. Both holes hit broad zones of low-grade mineralisation, with a notable 220m intercept averaging 0.37g/t gold from 181m depth and ending in mineralisation. This represents one of the thickest intervals recorded on the project to date. The broad mineralised intercepts between Icon and Apollo highlight the potential scale of the gold system at the Glenburgh project. While high-grade discoveries remain a priority for Benz, the big low-grade gold envelope along the 4km northeast-trending Icon-Apollo structural corridor and enclosing the high-grade lenses, highlights a possible bulk mining opportunity with two clear paths to resource expansion. The company’s Glenburgh gold project has a mineral resource estimate of 16.3 million tonnes at a grade of 1g/t gold for 510,100 ounces of contained gold, based on shallow drilling. With the drill rig slated to soon begin a second assault on the project, Benz believes it is sitting on a district-scale gold system at Glenburgh with multi-million-ounce potential. Benz has kicked off an ambitious 30,000m reverse circulation drilling campaign at Glenburgh, with diamond drilling set to follow in the third quarter of the year. The program comes on the back of the company’s recent $13.5M capital raise, which will position it to aggressively advance the drilling program. Koonenberry Gold (ASX: KNB) Sunnyside prospect Enmore gold project, NSW. Hit: 102m assaying 1.10g/t gold including 9.7m at 3.57g/t gold Koonenberry Gold has landed an emphatic 102m run assaying 1.10g/t gold from 184m, including 44m going 1.77g/t gold from 235m, which includes 9.7m at 3.57g/t gold from 252.3m. The remarkable run was logged for the company’s third diamond drill hole at its Sunnyside prospect, which is part of its Enmore gold project in northeastern NSW. The intercept represents a hefty 112.20 gram-metre interval with an equivalent horizontal width of 80m, measured perpendicular to the strike of a 140m-wide northeast-striking host shear corridor. The Sunnyside prospect occurs along the Sunnyside fault at the contact between 302-million-year-old Permo-Carboniferous porphyritic Enmore Monzogranite to the northwest and older sedimentary Girrakool Bed rocks to the southeast. The shear corridor arcs gently around the near-vertical, sheared fault contact between the granite and the sediments. The company’s previous two diamond holes were both drilled at a 55-degree dip and intercepted spectacular runs. Visible gold was reported in seven of the nine holes drilled. The first hole, bored in granite to follow the steep granite-sediment contact, returned 170m assaying 1.75g/t gold from 77m, including 18.3m running 9.95g/t gold from 172.9m, with 0.3m going 144.5g/t gold from 173.8m. A second similar hole returned 172.9m assaying 2.07g/t gold from 171m, including 25m going 5.23g/t gold from 194m, which included 5m running 11.09g/t gold from 213m. The fourth and fifth holes both reported visible gold. More recent results from the fourth hole came home with a strong run of 149.5m at 0.94g/t gold from 184.5m, including 91.5m assaying 1.15g/t gold from 184.5m that also included 2m at 13.52g/t gold from 200m. Results are expected for the fifth hole in mid-June. The company interprets a true width of mineralisation across the primary shear zone of about 75m. Koonenberry hails its inaugural drilling program at Enmore as a great success, having identified a gold system extending across an area of about 260m x 300m, which remains open along strike to the southwest and northeast and at depth in the shear body. The results provide good evidence for the system’s potential to host broad intervals of shallow gold mineralisation and high-grade gold zones at depth. Ten holes have been put into the Sunnyside target at Enmore, with three showing visible gold. Results are pending for the remaining holes. The company held $5.35M in cash as of the end of March and remains well funded to continue its exploration at Enmore and across its other projects. Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: *****@*****.tld Source link #Big #Hits #White #Cliff #Benz #Mining #Koonenberry #Gold Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Stellantis appoints North America boss Antonio Filosa as new CEO Stellantis appoints North America boss Antonio Filosa as new CEO Stellantis logo is pictured at one of its assembly plants following a company’s announcement saying it will pause production there, in Toluca, state of Mexico, Mexico, on April 4, 2025. Henry Romero | Reuters Auto giant Stellantis on Wednesday appointed North American boss Antonio Filosa as its new chief executive, ending a months-long campaign to fill the firm’s leadership void. The multinational conglomerate, which owns household names including Jeep, Dodge, Fiat, Chrysler and Peugeot, said it would hold an extraordinary shareholder meeting in the coming days for Filosa to be elected to the board to serve as an executive director of the firm. Stellantis said Filosa would assume CEO powers effective from June 23. This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates. Source link #Stellantis #appoints #North #America #boss #Antonio #Filosa #CEO Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

My sister was found dead. Then I discovered her search history – and the online world that had gripped her | Internet safety My sister was found dead. Then I discovered her search history – and the online world that had gripped her | Internet safety Adele Zeynep Walton knew something was wrong when she stumbled out of her caravan in the New Forest at 8am – she was camping with her boyfriend – and, through her sleepy fog, saw her parents’ car driving towards her. Initially annoyed by the idea of a family walk so early in the day, she then noticed that the car was veering off the track and, as it drew closer, her mother looked “hysterical”. “Straight away,” she says. “I was like, ‘It’s Aimee.’” Aimee, Walton’s younger sister, was 21 and had suffered from poor mental health for some months. She loved music technology and art – her accomplished self-portraits dot the walls of the family’s home in Southampton, where her bedroom has been left exactly as it was before her death. She was such a big fan of the singer Pharrell Williams that he called her up five times to dance on stage at his concerts. But, with her mental health deteriorating, she had become harder and harder to reach. For two months, “we didn’t know where she was, what she was doing,” Walton says. In the New Forest, on that morning in October 2022, Walton found out the awful truth: Aimee had been found dead in a hotel room in Slough, Berkshire. She appeared to have taken her own life. In the days, weeks and months that followed, Walton and her family would learn that Aimee’s path to the hotel had been laid with the help of a complex network of online connections. She loved music and art … some of Aimee’s self-portraits in the family home. Photograph: Peter Flude/The Guardian Walton, 25, a journalist, pieced together that Aimee had spent time on a pro-suicide forum that the Guardian has chosen not to name. The site has been connected to at least 50 deaths in the ***, and is now being investigated by the regulator Ofcom under the Online Safety Act. According to the police investigating her death, it was on this forum that Aimee learned how to procure the substance that killed her, and how she met a man who flew from the US to Heathrow to accompany her while she died. (He was initially charged with assisting suicide, but no further action was taken.) Sitting in the garden of her parents’ house in Southampton, Walton explains how she came to write about what had happened. Her book, Logging Off: The Human Cost of Our Digital World, is partly the story of her sister, and partly a much broader call to arms to ordinary web-browsing, doom-scrolling, social-media-posting mortals to wake up to the harms that a largely unregulated digital world permits and perpetuates. “I thought: I need to pour all my efforts into digging deeper into this. Why are the general public not aware of these constant harms that are happening? Because it is constant. Pretty much every month I learn of a new family … And it’s like, we’ve been going on about this to MPs. Why is this still happening?” She mentions Vlad Nikolin-Caisley, also from Southampton, who died after reportedly using the same suicide forum that Aimee used; earlier this month, a woman was arrested on suspicion of assisting his suicide. When the pre-inquest review into Aimee’s death happens in June, Walton hopes that the online factors will be brought within the scope of the inquest, and that at the inquest itself in September, “online harms” will be cited as a cause of, or contributing factor to, her sister’s death. It’s a phrase she learned only recently. “Until we lost Aimee, I didn’t know what ‘online harm’ meant,” she says. She first heard the term from Ian Russell, father of Molly, and campaigner for online safety. Molly Russell was 14 when she took her life after viewing images and videos of self-harm, and, unusually, the coroner reported that online activity had “contributed to her death in a more than minimal way”. Walton hopes that the coroner investigating Aimee’s death will take a similar view, because she believes the word “suicide” alone heaps disproportionate responsibility on to Aimee, while leaving the digital world unaccountable and unregulated. ‘We can become vulnerable at any point in our lives’ … a photograph of Aimee. Photograph: Peter Flude/The Guardian She initially described her sister’s death as “suicide” – but says that no longer feels like a faithful representation of Aimee’s demise. Because if suicide is a self-directed, injurious behaviour, how far can a person be judged to be self-directed when acting under the influence of a purposeful online community? And is a person really choosing freely, Walton asks, when algorithms, which continued to show Aimee content relating to self-harm, power a darkening circle of interest and exposure? “That’s where I have a difficulty with calling it suicide,” Walton says. “My feeling is that Aimee was groomed into making the decision.” Her own emergent literacy around these ideas has turned Walton into a campaigner – she works with Bereaved Families for Online Safety and is a youth ambassador for People vs Big Tech. “We need to name the problem and fight against it,” she says. “Because otherwise it fuels the feeling that it’s an individual responsibility to keep ourselves safe online.” Walton says the police reported that the man who was with Aimee in the hotel had shared a room with her for 11 days before she died. While the room filled up with Aimee’s notes, written in such distress that, Walton says, they are illegible, he later told the police he was “working”. Walton says her lawyer has told her that, while the man did call 999 after Aimee took the toxic substance, he refused the instruction to perform CPR. Then there was the toxic substance, which Aimee is said to have obtained from Kenneth Law, a ********* national who has been linked to 88 deaths in the ***, and who is under investigation by the National Crime Agency. The forum itself was founded by two men, according to a New York Times investigation, who run a number of websites for “incels”. Wanting to retrace her sister’s last steps, Walton visited the forum herself. “A lot of the posts are basically saying, ‘Your family don’t care about you’, ‘You should do it’. ‘When are you going to catch the bus?’ is a phrase they use.” Walton believes that what takes place on the forum “is a type of radicalisation into an extreme action that people otherwise might not even have considered.” She is haunted by the possibility that the man who was with Aimee when she died was “living out a sick fantasy as an incel who wants to see a young and vulnerable woman end her life”. Before Aimee’s death, Walton felt neutral about technology. But, now, she believes that “the digital world is a warped distortion of our offline world, one that intensifies its pitfalls and maximises its risks”. Walton’s consideration of victims of online harms in her book ranges widely – from Archie Battersbee, who had accessed TikTok the day he suffered a catastrophic brain injury, to Meareg Amare Abrha, a university professor in Ethiopia who was killed following inciting posts on Facebook. She also considers the Amazon workers who have sought to unionise in a battle to improve pay and conditions, as well as “Tony”, her 90-year-old neighbour who suffered digital exclusion and whom Walton taught to use a smartphone. “For so long there was this facade of technology equals progress, technology equals innovation. That’s what I really want the book to challenge,” she says. She hopes that Trump’s inauguration, “where the tech guys [Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk] were lined up, was a shift for people in realising how closely these networks of power are connected”. ‘Campaigning enables survivors to regain control’ … Aimee’s bedroom at their family home. Photograph: Peter Flude/The Guardian But, sometimes, she says, she feels like the digital equivalent of a 1970s climate scientist. And she is the first to admit that her relationship with technology is complex – as was Aimee’s. Her earliest memories of their playing together are set around the family computer in their parents’ bedroom. “There’s a video of us playing, aged one and three – Chadwick and the Sneaky Egg Thief. A colouring-in game. We’d play it over and over … We grew up playing Stardoll, Club Penguin, The Sims, FarmVille. All my prominent childhood memories with Aimee involved digital technology,” she says. “Whether it’s Xbox, Nintendo, the computer … We were doing photoshoots on the ‘digicam’ from the age of eight. Just for fun!” In a sense, Walton says, she leads “a double life”. Her book has clearly made her question her own habits. She lived in a tracksuit while writing it, but none of her Instagram posts about the project show this. She uses an app to help her reduce her screen time. She posts on TikTok about logging off. Then again, video calls enabled her family “to grieve collectively” after her sister’s death – many of her relatives live in Turkey. Promoting the book has made it harder to stay offline. “I’m a hypocrite!” she says, because “my screen time this week is nine and a half hours.” A day? “It’s disgusting,” she says. “I am normally six hours.” And, anyway, she says, “I don’t want to present myself as perfect, like, ‘I’ve got it all under control, guys’. Because every day I’m trying again. We are up against a system that is rigged to capture our attention.” In the book, Walton writes that “campaigning enables survivors to regain control where it’s been taken from them”, and I wonder if it functions like that for her, because the process sounds exhausting. “Did I say that?” she says, surprised. “But, if I wasn’t doing this, where would that anger go? It would fester inside me and make me ill. I need to get it out of me.” She has recounted what happened to Aimee to support groups, her local MP (first Royston Smith, then Darren Paffey), to Peter Kyle, secretary of state for science, innovation and technology. “When we talk about online safety, often it’s child safety. And I find it really important, representing Aimee, to say, it’s not just children. We can become vulnerable at any point in our lives. And, if we only look at children’s safety we are going to see a generation get to 18 and not know how to lead safe and healthy digital lives,” she says. “I feel it’s my duty to Aimee, because I wish I could have protected her.” Her eyes are shiny with tears that don’t fall, when she says: “I’m doing what I am doing out of love for her that a lot of the time she wouldn’t let me give to her. And I think this is something that’s common with people who are struggling with their mental health. She didn’t want people to know how much she was struggling.” It can’t have been easy to make space to grieve between writing and campaigning. “Some days I’m like, I can’t really deal with this. Or, I just need a day in bed. Because my body is catching up with all the emotional stuff … Some days I cry because I wish I didn’t have to do this. I wish I was having my 20s and having a laugh. “But this is my concern: people in power will only act if they feel what this grief feels like. I would not wish that on anyone. But if Mark Zuckerberg, for example, lost a child to online harms, then he’d be like, ‘Oh my God, I need to wake up.’” Logging Off: The Human Cost of Our Digital World by Adele Zeynep Walton is published by Trapeze on 5 June (£20). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. In the *** and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email *****@*****.tld or *****@*****.tld. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org Source link #sister #dead #discovered #search #history #online #world #gripped #Internet #safety Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Asia-Pacific markets trade mixed after Wall Street gains on EU tariff delay – CNBC Asia-Pacific markets trade mixed after Wall Street gains on EU tariff delay – CNBC Asia-Pacific markets trade mixed after Wall Street gains on EU tariff delay CNBCTreasuries Hold Drop After Weak Japan Bond Auction: Markets Wrap Bloomberg.comAsia stocks rise tracking Wall St gains; Tech upbeat before Nvidia earnings Investing.comAsian shares are mostly higher after S&P 500 rallies 2% MSNHang Seng Index slumps over 280 points: Asian markets tank following Wall Street’s loses Times of India Source link #AsiaPacific #markets #trade #mixed #Wall #Street #gains #tariff #delay #CNBC Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

What to do if your laptop is lost or stolen – tips for when the worst happens | Laptops What to do if your laptop is lost or stolen – tips for when the worst happens | Laptops Laptops are the workhorses of the world and can contain thousands of important documents, photos and treasured memories. Losing them can mean more than just downtime from work. Here’s what to do in the event the worst happens. What to do if your laptop is lost or stolen Try to locate it using Microsoft or Apple’s Find My device service, lock it remotely and mark it as lost to help secure your data. Remove it as a trusted device for services you use, including your Apple or Microsoft account, cloud accounts, shops or other browser-based apps. Change your passwords for key accounts, including your Apple or Microsoft account. Start with your email to prevent thieves using it to gain access to your other accounts through password resets. Report the theft to the police by calling 101 in the *** and give them a description of the laptop, make, model, colour and serial number, which may be on the box or in your Apple or Microsoft account. Contact your insurance provider if you have cover, your laptop may come under some home contents policies. Tell your bank about any credit cards you may have details of stored on your laptop. Contact the laptop’s manufacturer to report the theft so it can blacklist its serial number, which may prevent it being activated and used by someone else. What to do as soon as you get a new one When you get a replacement laptop – either new or secondhand – there are a number of things you can do to help in the event it goes missing: Set a strong password or long pin that cannot be easily guessed, set up and use any face or fingerprint scanners and make sure the screen is set to lock after a short *******, usually when the screen turns off. Turn on device encryption in your privacy and security settings if not already enabled. Set up two-step verification for your Microsoft or Apple account, as well as any others you use. Turn on “Find My” in a Windows 10 or 11’s security settings or in iCloud settings on a Mac, which will help you locate a lost laptop, remotely lock it and mark it as lost with a message on its screen for anyone who finds it. Back up your data regularly. On a Windows laptop you can use Windows Backup to store files and settings on Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud service (5GB free). On a Mac you can use Time Machine to back up the laptop to an external drive or sync your apps and files with iCloud (you can store 5GB for free). Alternatively, copy files to an external drive but be sure to encrypt it first before backing up any sensitive documents. Host important documents in the cloud. Microsoft and Apple have cloud services, but there are many others including Google Drive, Dropbox and Proton Drive. Take note of your laptop’s colour, model number and serial number, and store your proof of purchase somewhere safe. Consider putting the laptop on your home contents insurance, which may need it to be added to the high-risk or high-value items list, particularly if you take it out of the home. Otherwise, there is dedicated laptop or gadget insurance, with multiple cover levels including theft. Source link #laptop #lost #stolen #tips #worst #Laptops Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Karratha Kats and Falcons on the hunt for long-lost Derby Cup ahead of 40th anniversary match Karratha Kats and Falcons on the hunt for long-lost Derby Cup ahead of 40th anniversary match The Karratha Kats and Falcons are calling on the Pilbara community to help find a missing piece of local footy history: the derby Cup, which hasn’t been seen in more than a decade. With the 40th anniversary of the in-season derby fast approaching on June 21, both clubs are hoping to recover the original trophy. “I found the cup in 2007 when we were doing a clean-out,” Falcons committee member Peta Mott said. “It was pretty damaged, so I gave it to (local business) Keyspot to fix, and I don’t recall seeing it after that. “But the cup was last confirmed seen in 2012.” “I would say a player or somebody had a good night after a game and thought to themselves ‘Oh, I’ll take that back’, and as people do, they just forgot about it, or it’s in a cupboard somewhere — in a box or in the shed.” Despite extensive efforts by both clubs, the cup has not resurfaced. Beyond its symbolic value, the trophy also serves as an important historical record. Engraved on it are the results of derby matches between the Kats and Falcons — information that is otherwise difficult to trace because of the region’s highly transient population. The Kats and Falcons are going halves on the cost of a new cup, which will be presented by 1985 Falcons captain Mitchell Thomas at the upcoming derby. “We’re going to put scores around the bottom and replicate the cup. As scores come to light, we will put them on, but it would really be nice if the cup was found somewhere, because then we could get all that history,” Ms Mott said. “It’s only been the last four games that we’ve actually beaten Kats, so that was sort of another trigger, to get a bit of red on to the cup. “If someone does have the cup, we would appreciate if they could send in photos from near or far so we can get the new one updated before June 21.” Source link #Karratha #Kats #Falcons #hunt #longlost #Derby #Cup #ahead #40th #anniversary #match Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

State Department accuses Cindy McCain of complaining about Gaza famine after World Food Programme chief’s interview State Department accuses Cindy McCain of complaining about Gaza famine after World Food Programme chief’s interview State Department press secretary Tammy Bruce seemed to blame aid shortages in Gaza on the UN World Food Programme and its chief, Cindy McCain, on Tuesday as she answered a question about trucks carrying food, water and medicine into the ravaged Gaza Strip. Bruce was questioned at a press briefing about aid trucks traveling into Gaza at the Kerem Shalom crossing, which resumed last Monday after a three-month blockade imposed by the Israeli military. The State Department spokeswoman appeared to be unaware of any blockade, and seemed to misunderstand the intent of NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell’s question as Bruce quipped that McCain should have “spoken up” about finding a way to get aid into Gaza sooner. Bruce’s remark came in response to a question about McCain’s own comments Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation about the resumption of the truck crossings. “This is, however, the first delivery of major aid, if not the only aid we’ve been hearing for months. I wish that Cindy McCain had spoken up that they had found a way to move food into Gaza, because that certainly hadn’t been conveyed to us,” said Bruce on Tuesday. “But now – which, if that’s the case, that’s great.” McCain had refuted claims on Face the Nation from the U.S. and Israeli governments blaming ****** for supposedly looting aid trucks. In actuality, she said, ************ residents of Gaza were so desperate for food after a three-month blockade that starving people were rushing aid trucks on the road. “Listen, these people are desperate, They see a World Food Programme truck coming in, and they run for it,” McCain said. “This doesn’t have anything to do with ****** or any kind of organized crime, or anything.” Trucks have entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing at a rate of about 100 per day, McCain said on Sunday. That statistic makes Bruce’s reference to a singular aid delivery all the more bewildering — especially given that the holdup has never been a result of the World Food Programme or the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), its partner, being unable to “find” ways to get aid across the border. All crossings are controlled by the Israeli government with the exception of the Rafah crossing, which is controlled by Egypt. Israel’s government has demanded that any physical aid delivered to Gaza must cross through an Israeli-controlled point of entry. Bruce’s misunderstanding was revealed in the rest of her exchange with Mitchell. Until “now there has been a blockade, a blockade by Israel of the food, so no one has been able to get through those crossings,” Mitchell explained to the press secretary. “Well, I thought you just said Cindy McCain said that she was able to do that. But I would also say that this process managed to overcome that dynamic, and the dynamic has changed,” Bruce said, before beginning to repeat that “whatever it was” blocking aid had been resolved. “Israel was blocking it,” Mitchell spelled out again. Bruce noted: “It clearly needs to expand. I don’t speak for this foundation, but clearly we’ve got to welcome any dynamic that allows getting aid and food into the region, which is happening right now. And that’s the story.” The Independent reached out to the State Department for further comment. Tammy Bruce appeared confused and uninformed about the Gaza aid situation at Tuesday’s briefing (Middle East Images/AFP via Getty) Tuesday’s briefing is not the first time Bruce, a veteran of Fox News on her first assignment in the federal government, has seemed to have been caught off guard at a press briefing thanks to a lack of preparedness or communication throughout the broader administration or even just her agency. In one moment at a briefing on May 1, the press secretary declined to comment on an announcement that occurred during her news conference stating that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would be taking on a second role as national security adviser: “I just heard this from you,” she told ad reporter. During an interview with CNN days later she got into a back-and-forth with anchor Kasie Hunt after refusing to answer repeated questions about Rubio’s work at the agency, including whether the secretary had spoken with El Salvador’s president regarding a man the Trump administration has alternated between admitting and refusing to admit that it deported illegally, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. After Bruce said she wouldn’t comment on Rubio’s basic day-to-day actions as secretary, an exasperated Hunt responded, “You’re the spokeswoman for the State Department! I mean, with all due respect, like … ?” Source link #State #Department #accuses #Cindy #McCain #complaining #Gaza #famine #World #Food #Programme #chiefs #interview Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

The U.S.’ AI love affair with the UAE boils down to dominance The U.S.’ AI love affair with the UAE boils down to dominance UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (R) welcomes his US counterpart Donald Trump upon arrival at the presidential terminal in Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025. Giuseppe Cacace | Afp | Getty Images DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Deep in the oil-rich deserts of the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates is on a mission to establish supremacy in the field of artificial intelligence. Seven thousand miles across the planet, the United States, led by President Donald Trump, wants American firms to dominate the global AI race. While their goals may be separated by continents, their ambitions are strikingly aligned. The U.S. currently makes the world’s most advanced semiconductor chips, while the UAE and neighboring Gulf countries have the abundant, cheap energy needed to power enormous AI data centers. The two countries have been allies for half a century, and Abu Dhabi embraced Trump during the U.S. president’s visit this month with unprecedented fanfare and investment pledges, many of which focused on tech and AI. In the eyes of many investors, financial leaders, and political powers players from Silicon Valley and Washington to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the two countries’ ever-strengthening AI alliance — to which hundreds of billions of dollars have already been committed — is a match made in heaven. “Energy‑rich Gulf nations join the roster of trusted partners just as U.S. data‑center grids hit their physical limits,” Myron Xie, an analyst at SemiAnalysis, told CNBC. At the same time, “the UAE gains access to advanced compute and talent, helping it pursue its own sovereign AI goals,” Xie said. “The Middle East, flush with cheap energy and capital, is poised to become the next regional AI hub.” In the UAE, the developments are part of a long-term strategy by the Gulf sheikhdom to position itself as a global leader in AI. This, the country’s leadership holds, will enhance its geopolitical influence, diversify its economy beyond crude oil dependency, and assert itself as a technological powerhouse. The goal for Washington is clear: to ensure American companies lead the global AI race with China and spread American tech around the world. Trump’s Middle East visit in mid-May — which featured stops in Riyadh, Doha, and Abu Dhabi — saw the announcement of over $200 billion in commercial deals between the U.S. and the UAE. This brought the total of investment agreements in the Gulf region, including those from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to over $2 trillion. As part of the Abu Dhabi deals, OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia and Cisco Systems announced that they will help build Stargate UAE AI campus launching in 2026. The Stargate Project is a $500 billion private sector AI-focused investment vehicle, announced by OpenAI in January in partnership with Abu Dhabi investment firm MGX and Japan’s SoftBank. The companies said an initial 200-megawatt AI cluster should launch in Abu Dhabi next year. And the AI campus deal means the UAE gets access to many of Nvidia’s latest chips, American technology and software. It’s the kind of agreement that would have faced restrictions under the previous U.S. administration, but Trump has looked to change the way is approaching tech export restrictions. His administration plans to rescind a Biden era “AI diffusion rule,” which imposed strict export controls on advanced AI chips even to U.S.-friendly nations. that doing away with these limits could open the door for the sensitive American technology to end up in the hands of rivals like China — a topic of ongoing debate among U.S. lawmakers and security professionals. ‘Compute, not crude’ Once known primarily as a partnership centered around oil exports and weapons purchases, the pillars of the U.S.-Gulf relationship are changing, says Mohammed Soliman, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC. “Compute, not crude, is going to be the central pillar of the U.S.-Gulf relationship,” Soliman said. “Moving forward, it’s no longer going to be only about energy policy; it is going to be about compute and how we and the Gulf are building an AI ecosystem that’s able to service third markets, emerging markets.” Compute, in the context of AI, refers to the computational resources, like hardware and processing power, needed to train and run AI models. “And this is a huge inflection point for the relationship [compared to] where we were a few years ago,” Soliman said, speaking on a Middle East Institute podcast recorded on May 19. “Moving forward, the relationship is going to be much more impactful on technical questions around AI, data centers, and chips than ever before.” Notably, the UAE has bet fully on a U.S.-led AI future — a particularly salient point within the context of U.S.-China competition. Emirati AI company G42, which has major partnerships with OpenAI, Nvidia and Microsoft, to name a few, has fully divested from ******** companies — including an estimated $100 million stake in TikTok owner ByteDance — to avert U.S. Commerce Department sanctions and retain access to Nvidia chips and other U.S. technology that powers AI applications. “So far right now, we are racing to have the best large language model and ultimately to have AGI (artificial general intelligence),” said Baghdad Gherras, a UAE-based venture partner at Antler, which invests in early-stage AI ventures. AGI generally refers to artificial intelligence that is smarter than humans, though definitions vary. “For the UAE, if they want to be a leader in the AI race, the first thing that they have to secure is compute. If you don’t have compute, you won’t have a seat in terms of AI leadership,” Gherras told CNBC. He added that the UAE “decided to re-shift the geo-economic focus from China to the U.S., because they understood that Nvidia makes by far the best chips for AI, but also the entire semiconductor supply chain is mostly in Taiwan.” Still, Gherras noted, China “is catching up really fast, crazy fast.” ‘Tremendous level of influence’ The UAE’s development of its own large language model (LLM), Falcon AI, represents a major step for the region in AI development — but it also provides the foundation for the country’s geopolitical and economic ambitions to dominate the AI market within the next decade. Such a position would also enhance the Emirates’ diplomatic leverage, allowing it to play a more influential role in global tech governance and policy discussions. “If those ambitions become reality, you might see the Gulf acting as a region that offers compute as a service for the rest of emerging markets,” the Middle East Institute’s Soliman said. “Think about the Gulf as a place that houses large language models in Swahili, in Hindi, in these languages, and they are able to offer housing data, training data, inference for all these economies, because they have the infrastructure,” he added. “So they become their AI leader for the emerging markets.” “And this is a tremendous, tremendous level of influence, tremendous level of development,” Soliman emphasized. “Where they used to serve as energy producers, to become a back-end for AI applications — this is really, really massive.” U.S. pushes American AI Part of the U.S.’s push in the UAE and the broader region comes down to a desire for American technology to establish supremacy globally and push back the advances of China. On the one hand, U.S. export curbs have restricted access for companies like Nvidia to sell advanced technology to China. It has also stopped China access some technology to advance its own development in areas like semiconductors and AI. At the same time, Washington is opening up new markets, like the Middle East, to its biggest tech companies. “The move has a political angle, as it bolsters the U.S. compute supply chains while constraining China. It grants the U.S. an edge in the AI arms race, positioning the country for continued leadership,” David Meier, economist at Julius Baer, said in note earlier this month. Beijing and ******** companies have been trying to access new markets to push their technology across the globe, especially in areas like AI. But the U.S. has been working to entrench itself first and strike partnerships with governments to do so. “The race is on to diffuse U.S.-based AI into every part of the world,” Daniel Newman, CEO of Futurum Group, told CNBC on Tuesday. American companies have taken up the call. OpenAI, which struck a deal with the UAE last week to build AI infrastructure and roll out ChatGPT nationwide, has positioned itself as a countermeasure to China and as the business able to deliver U.S. artificial intelligence to countries around the world. In February, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane told CNBC that the company sees a world in which there are two major AI models — one led by China’s ********** Party and a U.S.-led “small ‘d’ democratic” AI. “If you’re a country and you’re looking to build your own AI ecosystem, your own AI hub, you’re building developers in your country which are going to be some version of the companies of the future, I think you would prefer to be seeing that built on a democratic AI system because it is going to facilitate your country being able to use this technology for your own nation building purposes,” Lehane said. — CNBC’s Dylan Butts contributed to this report. Source link #U.S #love #affair #UAE #boils #dominance Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

WNBA says it cannot substantiate claims of racism towards Angel Reese at Fever – The Guardian WNBA says it cannot substantiate claims of racism towards Angel Reese at Fever – The Guardian WNBA says it cannot substantiate claims of racism towards Angel Reese at Fever The GuardianWNBA can’t verify hateful comments toward Reese ESPNWNBA investigated alleged racist remarks at Sky-Fever game, says it cannot substantiate the claims CBS NewsWNBA investigation finds no evidence of hateful comments toward Angel Reese Fox NewsWNBA shares findings of investigation into fan racism claims after Caitlin Clark-Angel Reese dustup New York Post Source link #WNBA #substantiate #claims #racism #Angel #Reese #Fever #Guardian Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

The U.S.’ AI love affair with the UAE boils down to dominance The U.S.’ AI love affair with the UAE boils down to dominance UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (R) welcomes his US counterpart Donald Trump upon arrival at the presidential terminal in Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025. Giuseppe Cacace | Afp | Getty Images DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Deep in the oil-rich deserts of the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates is on a mission to establish supremacy in the field of artificial intelligence. Seven thousand miles across the planet, the United States, led by President Donald Trump, wants American firms to dominate the global AI race. While their goals may be separated by continents, their ambitions are strikingly aligned. The U.S. currently makes the world’s most advanced semiconductor chips, while the UAE and neighboring Gulf countries have the abundant, cheap energy needed to power enormous AI data centers. The two countries have been allies for half a century, and Abu Dhabi embraced Trump during the U.S. president’s visit this month with unprecedented fanfare and investment pledges, many of which focused on tech and AI. In the eyes of many investors, financial leaders, and political powers players from Silicon Valley and Washington to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the two countries’ ever-strengthening AI alliance — to which hundreds of billions of dollars have already been committed — is a match made in heaven. “Energy‑rich Gulf nations join the roster of trusted partners just as U.S. data‑center grids hit their physical limits,” Myron Xie, an analyst at SemiAnalysis, told CNBC. At the same time, “the UAE gains access to advanced compute and talent, helping it pursue its own sovereign AI goals,” Xie said. “The Middle East, flush with cheap energy and capital, is poised to become the next regional AI hub.” In the UAE, the developments are part of a long-term strategy by the Gulf sheikhdom to position itself as a global leader in AI. This, the country’s leadership holds, will enhance its geopolitical influence, diversify its economy beyond crude oil dependency, and assert itself as a technological powerhouse. The goal for Washington is clear: to ensure American companies lead the global AI race with China and spread American tech around the world. Trump’s Middle East visit in mid-May — which featured stops in Riyadh, Doha, and Abu Dhabi — saw the announcement of over $200 billion in commercial deals between the U.S. and the UAE. This brought the total of investment agreements in the Gulf region, including those from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to over $2 trillion. As part of the Abu Dhabi deals, OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia and Cisco Systems announced that they will help build Stargate UAE AI campus launching in 2026. The Stargate Project is a $500 billion private sector AI-focused investment vehicle, announced by OpenAI in January in partnership with Abu Dhabi investment firm MGX and Japan’s SoftBank. The companies said an initial 200-megawatt AI cluster should launch in Abu Dhabi next year. And the AI campus deal means the UAE gets access to many of Nvidia’s latest chips, American technology and software. It’s the kind of agreement that would have faced restrictions under the previous U.S. administration, but Trump has looked to change the way is approaching tech export restrictions. His administration plans to rescind a Biden era “AI diffusion rule,” which imposed strict export controls on advanced AI chips even to U.S.-friendly nations. that doing away with these limits could open the door for the sensitive American technology to end up in the hands of rivals like China — a topic of ongoing debate among U.S. lawmakers and security professionals. ‘Compute, not crude’ Once known primarily as a partnership centered around oil exports and weapons purchases, the pillars of the U.S.-Gulf relationship are changing, says Mohammed Soliman, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC. “Compute, not crude, is going to be the central pillar of the U.S.-Gulf relationship,” Soliman said. “Moving forward, it’s no longer going to be only about energy policy; it is going to be about compute and how we and the Gulf are building an AI ecosystem that’s able to service third markets, emerging markets.” Compute, in the context of AI, refers to the computational resources, like hardware and processing power, needed to train and run AI models. “And this is a huge inflection point for the relationship [compared to] where we were a few years ago,” Soliman said, speaking on a Middle East Institute podcast recorded on May 19. “Moving forward, the relationship is going to be much more impactful on technical questions around AI, data centers, and chips than ever before.” Notably, the UAE has bet fully on a U.S.-led AI future — a particularly salient point within the context of U.S.-China competition. Emirati AI company G42, which has major partnerships with OpenAI, Nvidia and Microsoft, to name a few, has fully divested from ******** companies — including an estimated $100 million stake in TikTok owner ByteDance — to avert U.S. Commerce Department sanctions and retain access to Nvidia chips and other U.S. technology that powers AI applications. “So far right now, we are racing to have the best large language model and ultimately to have AGI (artificial general intelligence),” said Baghdad Gherras, a UAE-based venture partner at Antler, which invests in early-stage AI ventures. AGI generally refers to artificial intelligence that is smarter than humans, though definitions vary. “For the UAE, if they want to be a leader in the AI race, the first thing that they have to secure is compute. If you don’t have compute, you won’t have a seat in terms of AI leadership,” Gherras told CNBC. He added that the UAE “decided to re-shift the geo-economic focus from China to the U.S., because they understood that Nvidia makes by far the best chips for AI, but also the entire semiconductor supply chain is mostly in Taiwan.” Still, Gherras noted, China “is catching up really fast, crazy fast.” ‘Tremendous level of influence’ The UAE’s development of its own large language model (LLM), Falcon AI, represents a major step for the region in AI development — but it also provides the foundation for the country’s geopolitical and economic ambitions to dominate the AI market within the next decade. Such a position would also enhance the Emirates’ diplomatic leverage, allowing it to play a more influential role in global tech governance and policy discussions. “If those ambitions become reality, you might see the Gulf acting as a region that offers compute as a service for the rest of emerging markets,” the Middle East Institute’s Soliman said. “Think about the Gulf as a place that houses large language models in Swahili, in Hindi, in these languages, and they are able to offer housing data, training data, inference for all these economies, because they have the infrastructure,” he added. “So they become their AI leader for the emerging markets.” “And this is a tremendous, tremendous level of influence, tremendous level of development,” Soliman emphasized. “Where they used to serve as energy producers, to become a back-end for AI applications — this is really, really massive.” U.S. pushes American AI Part of the U.S.’s push in the UAE and the broader region comes down to a desire for American technology to establish supremacy globally and push back the advances of China. On the one hand, U.S. export curbs have restricted access for companies like Nvidia to sell advanced technology to China. It has also stopped China access some technology to advance its own development in areas like semiconductors and AI. At the same time, Washington is opening up new markets, like the Middle East, to its biggest tech companies. “The move has a political angle, as it bolsters the U.S. compute supply chains while constraining China. It grants the U.S. an edge in the AI arms race, positioning the country for continued leadership,” David Meier, economist at Julius Baer, said in note earlier this month. Beijing and ******** companies have been trying to access new markets to push their technology across the globe, especially in areas like AI. But the U.S. has been working to entrench itself first and strike partnerships with governments to do so. “The race is on to diffuse U.S.-based AI into every part of the world,” Daniel Newman, CEO of Futurum Group, told CNBC on Tuesday. American companies have taken up the call. OpenAI, which struck a deal with the UAE last week to build AI infrastructure and roll out ChatGPT nationwide, has positioned itself as a countermeasure to China and as the business able to deliver U.S. artificial intelligence to countries around the world. In February, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane told CNBC that the company sees a world in which there are two major AI models — one led by China’s ********** Party and a U.S.-led “small ‘d’ democratic” AI. “If you’re a country and you’re looking to build your own AI ecosystem, your own AI hub, you’re building developers in your country which are going to be some version of the companies of the future, I think you would prefer to be seeing that built on a democratic AI system because it is going to facilitate your country being able to use this technology for your own nation building purposes,” Lehane said. — CNBC’s Dylan Butts contributed to this report. Source link #U.S #love #affair #UAE #boils #dominance Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Saltend biofuel plant ‘faces closure after US trade deal’ Saltend biofuel plant ‘faces closure after US trade deal’ Vivergo/PA The plant produces bioethanol, which is used in E10 petrol The ***’s largest bioethanol plant will be forced to close unless the government acts, according to its operator. In April, Associated British Foods (ABF) said it was in talks with the government to help save its Vivergo Fuels site at Saltend, near Hull, after being forced to cut production levels due to low bioethanol prices. On Tuesday, Vivergo said the removal of a 19% tariff on US ethanol imports, which was part of the recent ***-US trade deal, was the “final blow”. A government spokesperson said it was working closely with the industry to understand the impacts of the trade deal and it was open to discussions over potential support. Urgent action needed In a letter to farmers, Vivergo managing director Ben Hackett said: “Unfortunately, if there is no government intervention in the next few weeks, our plant will have to close. “That is because the government has made a series of decisions that undercut *** ethanol production in favour of US imports. The most recent trade deal was the final blow. “If there is no government intervention, we will not be able to purchase any more wheat outside our current, limited, commercial commitments.” The firm said that without urgent action, the plant, which employs more than 160 people, would no longer be viable and its wheat purchases would end. Mr Hackett added: “This is avertable. If the government provides sufficient policy certainty to us in the long term and ameliorates the effects of their decisions in the short term, we can continue to operate and expand production. “But so far, they have made no commitments.” Vivergo The Vivergo fuels site will be forced to close unless the government acts, the company says Earlier this month, Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds met representatives of ABF and the country’s other key bioethanol producer, Ensus ***, which is based in Cleveland. The firms said the the secretary of state agreed on the need for “urgent next steps” to protect the ***’s bioethanol industry and had committed to act within “days, not weeks” amid concerns that hundreds of jobs could be at risk. Mr Hackett said: “So far, nothing has been forthcoming.” However, he added: “We still believe this situation can be turned around – but time is rapidly running out.” In response, a government spokesperson said: “We signed a deal with the US in the national interest to secure thousands of jobs across key sectors. “We are now working closely with the industry to understand the impacts of the ***-US trade deal on the ***’s two bioethanol companies and are open to discussion over potential options for support.” The Saltend plant produces bioethanol which is used in E10 petrol. E10, which was introduced in 2021 to help cut carbon emissions, contains up to 10% bioethanol. Vivergo also produces animal feed, which is a by-product of the bioethanol production process. Source link #Saltend #biofuel #plant #faces #closure #trade #deal Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

No time like Alice – Demons set to regain AFL star No time like Alice – Demons set to regain AFL star Vice-captain Jack Viney is likely to return this week, giving Melbourne another boost as they build mid-season AFL momentum. The midfielder has been sidelined since round nine because of concussion symptoms. Demons coach Simon Goodwin is confident Viney will return on Sunday against St Kilda in Alice Springs. “He’s on track to play this week,” Goodwin said. “Obviously with the protocols, it’s 12 days minimum – it’s very individualised and it’s taken a little bit longer to work his way through. “But everything so far that we’ve seen, he’s tracking towards playing this week.” The injury news is mixed for the Demons, who have won five of their last six, with Charlie Spargo sidelined again. Spargo could be out for six weeks because of a fractured shoulder blade from the weekend’s win over Sydney. He was hurt in an incident moments before Callum Mills collected him high, earning the Swans captain a one-game rough conduct suspension. Goodwin stressed Spargo’s injury was not because of Mills’s high contact. Spargo returned earlier this season from a year out with an Achilles injury. “Shattered for Charlie – he’s done so much work obviously from the Achilles to work his way back after missing 12 months,” Goodwin said. “It’s pretty disappointing for Charlie because he’s been such a great contributor in the last four to six weeks. “He’s been a big part of helping us in many areas of our footy team. “He’s going to be missed, but we’ll get him back at the right time.” Source link #time #Alice #Demons #set #regain #AFL #star Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]