South Africa Envoy Sidelined in Talks to Reset Relations With US
Relations between Pretoria and Washington have been fraught since Trump's return to the White House in January. The American president has made the unfounded claim that South Africa is subjecting White farmers to genocide and confiscating their land, expelled its ambassador, halted most aid and threatened to slap a 30% reciprocal tariff on its exports to the US by Aug. 1 if a favorable trade deal isn't struck. There have been no official land seizures in South Africa since apartheid ended in 1994.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
Trump's AI Orders, Gixel's AR Optics, Big Tech Spends On Nvidia
WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 23: U.S. President Donald Trump displays a signed executive order at an AI ... More summit hosted by All‑In Podcast and Hill & Valley Forum at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium on July 23, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump signed executive orders related to his AI "Action Plan" intended to promote U.S. dominance of the technology during the event. (Photo by) Trump signs sweeping 'AI Action Plan' and 'anti‑woke' order. The plan emphasises 'beating China' and loosening regulations so data centres and chip factories can be built more quickly. Trump also signed an 'anti‑woke' executive order that bars AI vendors from receiving federal contracts if their models include diversity or equity‑related content. Yikes. AI is the new history book, the new Wikipedia. Imagine if all our content came from the same oracle. To paraphrase George Orwell: he who controls AI, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future. TOPSHOT - US President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room flanked by Masayoshi Son (2R), ... More Chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp, Larry Ellison (2L), Executive Charmain Oracle and Sam Altman (R), CEO of Open AI at the White House on January 21, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP) (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images) OpenAI and Oracle scale back the $500 billion Stargate project from 30 GW to 4.5 GW. Then Software bailed and now they're only going to generate 4.4 gigawatts. That's 85% smaller. They're going to open one data center. There's not going to be a big press conference with the president and cover stories about this. Even so, the new facilities will use more than two million chips (wire that money directly to Nvidia). There was a lot of speculation in the ancient days of January, 2025 that this was not a real deal. It only took six months to unravel. WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 23: Jensen Huang, Co-Founder and CEO, NVIDIA speaks onstage at the All-In and ... More Hill & Valley Forum "Winning The AI Race" at Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium on July 23, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo byfor Hill & Valley Forum) xAI seeks up to $12 billion in debt to buy Nvidia chips Elon Musk's AI company xAI is working with Valor Equity Partners to raise as much as $12 billion in debt to acquire Nvidia GB200 and GB300 chips for training Grok. According to the Wall Street Journal, lenders want repayment within three years and may cap borrowing to limit risk. Musk said xAI is building multiple superclusters using more than 230,000 GPUs and will soon launch another with 550,000 chips. Nvidia is going to get a significant chunk of that ten billion. This image makes the basic principles very clear. Gixel Emerges from stealth with €5 million seed round led by Brendan Iribe. Their design for AR glasses uses curved lenses, enabling a slim, lightweight form factor suitable for everyday wear. The optics engine delivers variable focal planes, allowing virtual objects to appear at correct depths and fostering natural eye focus dynamics. Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Karlsruhe, Germany, Gixel closed an oversubscribed €5 million seed round, led by Oculus VR co‑founder Brendan Iribe and backed by former 20th Century Fox/RED futurist Ted Schilowitz, the FlixBus founders (Jochen Engert, Daniel Kraus, André Schwämmlein), Germany's federal innovation agency SPRIND, and early‑stage VC firm LEA Partners. The funds will support the industrialization of Gixel's curved‑lens optical engine, development of developer kits, and groundwork for a Series A round in the coming year. Deep fake hoax false and ai manipulation social media on display. Searching on tablet, pad, phone or ... More smartphone screen in hand. Abstract concept of news titles 3d illustration. UC Riverside researchers, in collaboration with Google scientists, have developed an AI model capable of detecting deepfakes. Unlike earlier detectors, their new UNITE software identifies inconsistencies in backgrounds, motion patterns, and subtle visual artifacts. Built on a transformer architecture and leveraging a novel 'attention-diversity loss,' it avoids focusing solely on faces by spreading attention across multiple regions. While still in development, it holds promise for integration into social media, fact-checking, and newsroom workflows, helping curb the spread of sophisticated video misinformation and AI slop in general. Adobe Firefly is about to make its biggest leap in AI video yet with a new model and Veo 3 integration Adobe has just released Firefly Video Model 1.9, a major upgrade that significantly boosts realism and storytelling in AI-generated videos, available now via its Web App. This update enables creators to produce more dynamic natural and urban environments, including detailed animal motion, weather effects, and 2D/3D animation. Firefly also now supports Veo 3, Luma, Runway, and Topaz integrations. Notably, the beta 'Generate Sound Effects' feature lets users craft custom audio via text prompts or voice input. The model also introduces new controls: reference-video input for composition transfer, style presets (like claymation and anime), and keyframe cropping tools. LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - MAY 01: Co-founder and CEO of Runway Cristobal Valenzuela and ... More artist/musician Claire L. Evans speak on stage during the 2024 AI Film Festival Los Angeles Panel at The Orpheum Theatre on May 01, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by) Disney and Netflix are Quietly Using Runway's AI Video Generators. If you recall, Runway is the AI start up that's raised $450 Million and was valued at $3B. They already have a deal with Lionsgate. Netflix has already used Runway's tools to produce a VFX scene in its sci‑fi series The Eternaut, highlighting savings in both time and cost. While Disney is reportedly testing the same technology, neither company has issued formal announcements. Animal Company becomes one of the highest‑grossing Meta Quest games. The social VR game where players use Gorilla Tag‑like locomotion with their arms in a horror‑mystery setting, is a bona-fide bestseller with more than 500,000 daily active users and about one billion views on TikTok. Its average daily playtime is 100 minutes and 45 percent of users return after 28 days. Since monetization began in April, paying users have increased ninefold. This column is also a podcast hosted by its author, Charlie Fink, Ted Schilowitz, former studio executive, and founding Red Camera executive, and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap. This week our guest is Bilawal Sidhu, Ex-Google PM (XR, maps) and now leading creative voice at the intersection of Generative of AI and media. We can be found on Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube. What We're Reading RP1 says that metaverse needs its own browser (Dean Takahashi/GamesBeat)
Bloomberg
an hour ago
- Bloomberg
US-Japan Trade Deal Hinges on Fund That Remains a Puzzle
The US and Japan this week reached what President Donald Trump called the largest trade deal in history after Tokyo pledged to set up a $550 billion fund for investment into the US, details of which remain obscure. The lack of clarity about how the fund will work adds to questions about the viability of the agreement, which imposes 15% tariffs on Japanese cars and other goods. While the start date and other basic elements are still unknown, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned this week that the US would monitor implementation and bump the rate up to 25% if Trump isn't satisfied.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Fact Check: Another old photo of Trump and daughter Ivanka makes the rounds again
Claim: An old photo authentically shows U.S. President Donald Trump with his daughter Ivanka Trump sitting on his lap. Rating: In mid-July 2025, an old photo resurfaced on social media purportedly showing U.S. President Donald Trump with his then-teenage daughter Ivanka Trump sitting on his lap at what appeared to be a social event. The photo spread following the release of a July 7 Department of Justice (DOJ) memo stating that the department's review found no incriminating "client list" related to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and no credible evidence that he had blackmailed prominent people. (Leah McElrath/Bluesky) For example, on July 17, a Bluesky user posted (archived) the photo and wrote: "So many creepy pics of Trump with Ivanka exist, including this one in which it looks like she's giving him a lap dance." Similar claims appeared elsewhere on X (archived) and for years had circulated on Reddit (archived and archived). The photo was shared by Trump critics alongside other images of Trump with his daughter at various points in her childhood and teenage years. The photo was authentic and not digitally manipulated or produced using artificial intelligence (AI). Therefore we have rated this claim as true. The photo can be found on Getty Images, where the caption states: "Dancing At Mar-A-Lago: Partygoers, including Ivanka Trump (center, in white) who her sits on her father, businessman Donald Trump's lap during concert (by the Beach Boys)." Getty says it was taken in 1996 at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, showing a social gathering with multiple attendees visible in the background. Trump's second wife Marla Maples was visible seated in the front row left. This is not the first time Snopes has fact-checked images allegedly showing Trump with his daughter. We have previously investigated other photos showing the pair in various time periods. United States Department of Justice. "FBI Memo." July 2025, Accessed 24 July 2025. Wrona, Aleksandra. "Old photos of Trump with his daughter Ivanka have resurfaced. They're real." Snopes, 23 July 2025. Accessed 24 July 2025.
