Paris prosecutors say they requested information about algorithm, not private data, from Musk's X
The office said X has not officially responded to its request.
Elon Musk's X denounced the investigation as politically motivated earlier on Monday.
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Reuters
27 minutes ago
- Reuters
Out-gunned Europe accepts least-worst US trade deal
LONDON, July 27 (Reuters) - In the end, Europe found it lacked the leverage to pull Donald Trump's America into a trade pact on its terms and so has signed up to a deal it can just about stomach - albeit one that is clearly skewed in the U.S.'s favour. As such, Sunday's agreement on a blanket 15% tariff after a months-long stand-off is a reality check on the aspirations of the 27-country European Union to become an economic power able to stand up to the likes of the United States or China. The cold shower is all the more bracing given that the EU has long portrayed itself as an export superpower and champion of rules-based commerce for the benefit both of its own soft power and the global economy as a whole. For sure, the new tariff that will now be applied is a lot more digestible than the 30% "reciprocal" tariff which Trump threatened to invoke in a few days. While it should ensure Europe avoids recession, it will likely keep its economy in the doldrums: it sits somewhere between two tariff scenarios the European Central Bank last month forecast would mean 0.5-0.9% economic growth this year compared to just over 1% in a trade tension-free environment. But this is nonetheless a landing point that would have been scarcely imaginable only months ago in the pre-Trump 2.0 era, when the EU along with much of the world could count on U.S. tariffs averaging out at around 1.5%. Even when Britain agreed a baseline tariff of 10% with the United States back in May, EU officials were adamant they could do better and - convinced the bloc had the economic heft to square up to Trump - pushed for a "zero-for-zero" tariff pact. It took a few weeks of fruitless talks with their U.S. counterparts for the Europeans to accept that 10% was the best they could get and a few weeks more to take the same 15% baseline which the United States agreed with Japan last week. "The EU does not have more leverage than the U.S., and the Trump administration is not rushing things," said one senior official in a European capital who was being briefed on last week's negotiations as they closed in around the 15% level. That official and others pointed to the pressure from Europe's export-oriented businesses to clinch a deal and so ease the levels of uncertainty starting to hit businesses from Finland's Nokia ( opens new tab to Swedish steelmaker SSAB ( opens new tab. "We were dealt a bad hand. This deal is the best possible play under the circumstances," said one EU diplomat. "Recent months have clearly shown how damaging uncertainty in global trade is for European businesses." That imbalance - or what the trade negotiators have been calling "asymmetry" - is manifest in the final deal. Not only is it expected that the EU will now call off any retaliation and remain open to U.S. goods on existing terms, but it has also pledged $600 billion of investment in the United States. The time-frame for that remains undefined, as do other details of the accord for now. As talks unfolded, it became clear that the EU came to the conclusion it had more to lose from all-out confrontation. The retaliatory measures it threatened totalled some 93 billion euros - less than half its U.S. goods trade surplus of nearly 200 billion euros. True, a growing number of EU capitals were also ready to envisage wide-ranging anti-coercion measures that would have allowed the bloc to target the services trade in which the United States had a surplus of some $75 billion last year. But even then, there was no clear majority for targeting the U.S. digital services which European citizens enjoy and for which there are scant homegrown alternatives - from Netflix (NFLX.O), opens new tab to Uber (UBER.N), opens new tab to Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab cloud services. It remains to be seen whether this will encourage European leaders to accelerate the economic reforms and diversification of trading allies to which they have long paid lip service but which have been held back by national divisions. Describing the deal as a painful compromise that was an "existential threat" for many of its members, Germany's BGA wholesale and export association said it was time for Europe to reduce its reliance on its biggest trading partner. "Let's look on the past months as a wake-up call," said BGA President Dirk Jandura. "Europe must now prepare itself strategically for the future - we need new trade deals with the biggest industrial powers of the world."
The Sun
27 minutes ago
- The Sun
More woke madness as beloved ITV detective show has been slapped with trigger warning over ‘crime scenes'
INSPECTOR Morse has been hit with his most baffling case yet — woke trigger warnings for the show's 'crime scenes'. ITV bosses fear viewers may get offended or upset while the mild-mannered Oxford detective solves his mystery of the week. 1 Streaming service ITVX even warns of 'Satanic images' in one episode of the crime drama, which ran from 1987 to 2000. Viewers must click past a parental control screen to watch series seven's 'Day of the Devil'. The episode sees Morse — played by John Thaw — and sidekick Det Sgt Robbie Lewis, (Kevin Whately) hunt down a rapist in a devil-worshipping cult after a jailbreak. One scene shows a Satanist being burned to death during a black mass. Many other episodes also have crime and violence warnings. Senior Tory MP Sir Alec Shelbrooke blasted: 'This is another example of soft-touch Britain seeping into everything. 'We're just going to be laughed at as a country if things like this continue, because nobody's prepared for the real world where there are no trigger warnings.' ITVX was contacted for comment on the Morse warnings. It previously said about general alerts: 'Programming that contains politically sensitive or distressing themes, content, or language has carried appropriate warnings since our launch.'
The Guardian
27 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Considering an open relationship? Don't read this Reddit forum
It all started with Elon Musk's black eye. In May, the President's on-again-off-again best friend appeared in the Oval Office visibly bruised. He laughed it off and said his five-year-old child had done it. The internet had other ideas. Soon, a round of extremely unconfirmed speculation began about an alleged – and I cannot stress the word 'alleged' enough – throuple: Musk; Trump's deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, and his wife, political adviser Katie Miller. The Democrats even weighed in with a post of an empty hotel room chair, a notorious signpost of cuckoldry. I'm not alone in finding perverse joy in other people's relationship dramas. Reddit's crowdsourced advice sections, particularly r/relationships and r/amitheasshole, have long been staples of viral posts. They're portable soap operas – or in some cases, sitcoms – with the added spice that they're (probably, sometimes, maybe) real. The Musk-Miller saga led me to r/openmarriageregret, a subreddit mining and reposting threads from other relationship and polyamory boards for cautionary tales of open relationships gone wrong. Maintaining a relationship with another human being contorts us into new ugly shapes. Maintaining a relationship with two or more other human beings can break us apart. The page opens with a sober preamble: 'Life is about choices. Some we regret, some we are proud of – and some will haunt us for ever.' It's all very 'don't try this at home'. Sure. This is for educational purposes. Many posts are as you'd imagine: a man pressures his wife into an open relationship and is then shocked to discover that she's a sought-after 10 and he's sexual kryptonite. But things can get so much worse. One user asks if they're in the wrong 'for leaving our honeymoon because my husband and his boyfriend kept leaving me and my girlfriend out'. Another writes of a very contemporary woe: 'My husband wants to open our marriage for his AI girlfriend and says it's the next step in their relationship.' Her partner has been acting distant lately, she says, spending a lot of time on the phone, smiling to himself, hiding away in the home office. Then he says he has something to tell her. Is he having an affair? No. It's far worse. The user continues: 'He told me he wants to take the next step with her.' This involves introducing the AI to their children. 'How do I stay married to someone who's half emotionally checked out of our life and into a fucking chatbot?' In the comments, several people share their experience of male partners becoming enamoured of a simulation of a woman who doesn't talk back and is programmed to think everything he says is brilliant. The voyeurism of the group is twofold: of course the relationship dramas are engaging. But so are the way people discuss these real scenarios. The commenters bring their own baggage and bias, perhaps not realising they're part of the drama themselves. The group's diehards subscribe to one central thesis: that those opening their relationships want novelty and attention, and the person who provides this is functionally irrelevant. The thesis, of course, doesn't necessarily hold water. As much as non-monogamy continues to rise, we've been gawking at successful open arrangements for decades. Not that it matters to the group's frequenters, who forge forward in their cynicism, however misinformed. 'I know absolutely no one in an open relationship or marriage,' says one user, who is in the top 1% of commenters in the group. I know, by my slightly unsettling investment in the group, that I'm complicit. But I can't look away. Who are these commenters? Who hurt them? Why are they so devoted to other people's romantic dramas, their crumbling marriages? Why am I? The emotional zing of gossip is strong. Even the usually humourless Democrats are in on it. So, putting ill will to one side: I truly hope the alleged Musk-Miller polycule patch things up. Alleged! I mean alleged! They're made for each other.
