US-China Trade Talks; LA Immigration Clashes Escalate
The US and China are ready to resume trade talks in London today... with the flow of rare earth minerals set to be a key focus; clashes between law enforcement and demonstrators in Los Angeles over anti-deportation protests escalate. President Trump's deployment of the National Guard inflames residents... California's Governor says he will file a law suit to block the federal government's intervention; and Bloomberg learns Meta is in talks to invest in startup Scale AI. The financing may exceed $10 billion, making it one of the largest-ever private company funding deals. (Source: Bloomberg)
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Yahoo
25 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump announces $1,000 government-funded accounts for American babies
Donald Trump unveiled a federal program Monday providing $1,000 government-funded investment accounts for American babies, getting backing from top business leaders who said they plan to contribute billions more to an initiative tied to 'the big beautiful bill'. At a White House roundtable with over a dozen CEOs, including from Uber, Goldman Sachs and Dell Technologies, Trump relayed the details of 'Trump accounts' – tax-deferred investment accounts tracking stock market performance for children born between 2025 and 2029. 'For every US citizen born after December 31, 2024, before January 1, 2029, the federal government will make a one-time contribution of $1,000 into a tax-deferred account that will track the overall stock market,' Trump said. The accounts will be controlled by guardians and allow additional private contributions up to $5,000 annually. Trump called it 'a pro-family initiative that will help millions of Americans harness the strength of our economy to lift up the next generation'. Related: Trump's 'big, beautiful' bill is built on falsehoods about low-income families | Brigid Schulte and Haley Swenson CEOs from major companies including Michael Dell, Dara Khosrowshahi of Uber, David Solomon of Goldman Sachs, and Vladimir Tenev of Robinhood committed billions for employees' children's accounts. Trump praised the executives as 'really the greatest business minds we have today' who are 'committed to contributing millions of dollars to the Trump account'. Mike Johnson, the House speaker, also at the roundtable, championed the program, saying: 'It's a bold, transformative policy that gives every eligible American child a financial head start from day one. Republicans are proud to be the party we always have been. It supports life and families, prosperity and opportunity.' The program passed the House as part of a massive budget bill but faces stiffer Senate Republican resistance over the broader package. The accounts cannot be implemented as a standalone program and depend entirely on passage of what Trump calls the 'one big, beautiful bill' that is 'among the most important pieces of legislation in our country's history', claiming it's 'fully funded through targeted reforms' including welfare changes and a proposed remittance tax. However, the congressional budget office last week found the bill would also add $2.4tn to the national debt over the next decade while cutting Medicaid and food assistance programs. The CBO analysis showed the bill, which passed the House by a single vote and no Democratic support, would leave 10.9 million more Americans without healthcare by 2034. The treasury-funded accounts, previously called 'Maga accounts' resemble existing 529 college plans but with lower contribution limits – leading some financial advisers to say the Trump accounts may not offer the best investment incentives. The move is also not without precedent: the United Kingdom operated a similar Child Trust Fund with government seed funding from 2002-2011 before discontinuing the program, while Singapore runs the Baby Bonus Scheme that includes government-matched savings accounts for children. Trump was optimistic about returns, saying beneficiaries would 'really be getting a big jump on life, especially if we get a little bit lucky with some of the numbers and the economies into the future'. Johnson warned that failure to pass the legislation would result in 'the largest tax increase in American history' and pushed for swift congressional action on what he called 'pro-growth legislation' that would 'help every single American'. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
26 minutes ago
- Yahoo
First Thing: Donald Trump sends Marines to LA as mayor says city being used as ‘experiment'
Good morning. About 700 US marines were en route to Los Angeles on Tuesday after Donald Trump mobilized them the day before in response to protests over immigration raids. The president also doubled the number of national guard members to 4,000, in an extraordinary mobilization of troops against US residents that California leaders have called 'authoritarian'. The Pentagon mobilized the 700 active-duty marines after tensions between the federal government and the nation's second-largest city dramatically escalated over the weekend, with residents taking to the streets to demonstrate against a series of brutal crackdowns on immigrant communities. The raids have affected garment district works, day laborers and restaurants. Federal agents also arrested the president of a major California union who was serving as a community observer during the raids. Despite facing teargas and other munitions over the weekend, protesters continued to rally yesterday, and families of detained immigrants pleaded for their loved ones to be released. How is California responding? The state has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, accusing the US president of 'unlawfully' federalizing the state's national guard to quell a domestic protest. Days before Pete Hegseth fired three top aides last month over a Pentagon leak investigation into the disclosure of classified materials, according to four people familiar with the episode, a recently hired senior adviser said he could help with the inquiry. The adviser, Justin Fulcher, suggested to Hegseth's then chief of staff, and Hegseth's personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore, that he knew of warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA) that had identified the leakers. Fulcher offered to share the supposed evidence as long as he could help run the investigation, three of the people said. But when he eventually sat down with officials, it became clear he had no evidence of a wiretap, and the Pentagon had been duped. The extraordinary episode adds to the growing portrait of dysfunction inside Hegseth's front office. What happened next? The development was not communicated to the White House – so several Trump advisers who were told of the NSA wiretap claim believed that was part of the 'smoking gun' evidence against the three aides fired by Hegseth, until they developed their own doubts. The Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was leaving Tel Aviv on a flight to France after having been detained earlier with other activists on a Gaza-bound aid boat, Israel said today. 'Greta Thunberg is departing Israel on a flight to France,' Israel's foreign ministry said on its official X account, along with two photos of the activist on board a plane. The group of activists departed Italy on 1 June aboard the Madleen carrying a symbolic amount of food and supplies for Gaza, whose population is at risk of famine. Israeli forces intercepted the boat in international waters yesterday and towed it to the port of Ashdod. What about the other activists? 'The passengers of the 'Selfie Yacht' arrived at Ben Gurion airport to depart from Israel and return to their home countries,' the Israeli foreign ministry said. 'Those who refuse to sign deportation documents and leave Israel will be brought before a judicial authority.' The health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, is getting rid of all 17 members on a key panel of vaccine experts and will replace them, he said yesterday. A former girlfriend of Sean 'Diddy' Combs told jurors in his sex-trafficking and racketeering trial that she repeatedly told the music mogul she didn't want to have sex with other men. Authorities said a Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving at a Detroit airport for the alleged smuggling of biological material, the second such case in two days. Donald Trump unveiled a federal program yesterday providing $1,000 government-funded investment accounts for American babies, getting backing from top business leaders who said they plan to contribute billions more to an initiative tied to 'the big beautiful bill'. Graphic sexual content, bullying, abuse and threats of violence are rife on Meta-owned products. Now Meta is pumping billions of dollars a year into building its metaverse, a virtual world for education, business, shopping and live events. But if Meta has utterly failed to keep women and girls safe in its existing online spaces, why should we trust it with the future? The unexplained deaths of hundreds of elephants near watering holes across the Okavango delta in May 2020 alarmed conservationists. Nearly five years later, scientists finally published a paper indicating what they believe to be the reason behind the deaths: toxic water caused by an algal bloom. Millions of people are prevented from having the number of children they want by a toxic mix of economic barriers and sexism, a new UN report has warned. While right-wing governments, including the US and Hungary, are increasingly blaming falling fertility rates on a rejection of parenthood, the report found most people wanted children. Gen Z are making headlines for their hesitancy to use bar tabs – instead preferring to close out and pay after every single drink, no matter how many rounds they order. But do younger people have a monopoly on poor bar etiquette? Alaina Demopoulos spoke to bartenders across the US about which generation behaves best. First Thing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you're not already signed up, subscribe now. If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@
CNN
28 minutes ago
- CNN
Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly recruiting a team to build a ‘superintelligence'
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is personally assembling a team to achieve a 'superintelligence,' machines that are capable of surpassing human capabilities, according to a Bloomberg report. Zuckerberg is reportedly so frustrated with Meta's efforts in the artificial intelligence space that he has taken it upon himself to meet with experts in the field at his homes in Lake Tahoe and Palo Alto, California. Meta and Zuckerberg did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Meta has created AI tools that are woven into Facebook, WhatsApp and other Meta-owned apps, as well as its Ray-Ban glasses and chatbots. But the extremely competitive AI landscape continues to be led by ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, and Meta's Llama AI model has faced some recent setbacks. Zuckerberg plans to hire about 50 people and has shifted the layout of the company's Menlo Park headquarters to put the new AI team near his office, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing people that asked to remain anonymous. Zuckerberg has personally taken on this task because he's frustrated with the progress of Llama 4, Meta's latest large language model, according to Bloomberg. The New York Times, which separately confirmed many details of the report, also said that Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old founder and CEO of startup Scale AI, is part of the project with Meta mulling a billions in investment in his company. Zuckerberg has reportedly told people that the initiative would be funded by Meta's massive advertising business. It's unclear how the new team would work with Meta's existing AI team, Bloomberg said. Over the past few years, Zuckerberg has pushed increasingly further into repositioning Meta into an AI powerhouse with mixed success. His intensity in the area has sharpened following the leaps in advancement from OpenAI, a rival that raised tens of billions of dollars in funding. Zuckerberg's superintelligence goal is extremely lofty. Before AI can achieve capabilities that outmatch humans' brains, the technology first needs to become capable of accomplishing anything a human can do – a so-called artificial general intelligence. AI researchers debate how close we are to that AGI goal, with some saying we're years away and other saying we're nowhere close and we have no path to achieving it. Nevertheless, the AI race is as competitive as any tech battle in recent memory. Meta is facing off with Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Alphabet, as well as a host of other major upstarts with serious funding, including Elon Musk's xAI and Anthropic. Apple has gotten a slow start but announced some of its own AI developments this week. Many tech leaders like Zuckerberg believe AI represents an existential threat to their businesses. Meta has been trying to differentiate itself with Llama by making it open source, a free-to-use AI model that seeks to become the basis for the majority of the world's AI (think Android for artificial intelligence). Google believes AI poses a significant threat to its search business: If people can just ask an AI model for the answer, why search for anything? Apple understands that AI may ultimately make apps moot, potentially undermining its smartphone dominance. And OpenAI may have gotten a massive head start with ChatGPT, but competitors are quickly catching up. CNN's David Goldman contributed to this report.
