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  • ‘Too good to be true?’ As Shein and Temu take off, so does the scrutiny | CNN Business

    ‘Too good to be true?’ As Shein and Temu take off, so does the scrutiny | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong/New York
    CNN
     — 

    Temu and Shein are taking off in the United States, topping app stores and creating a frenzy with consumers.

    But as the two online shopping platforms become hugely popular, they’re also facing questions over a litany of issues, including how they’re able to sell goods at such strikingly low prices, how transparent they are with the public and how much environmental waste their businesses generate.

    Some of those questions aren’t unique to the two companies: Longtime fast-fashion producers like Zara or H&M

    (HNNMY)     have faced similar concerns.

    But in recent weeks, Temu and Shein have also faced greater scrutiny over their ties to China, the country where their businesses originated and where they continue to rely on manufacturers.

    Shein was started in China, while Temu was launched by a Chinese company that now bills itself as a multinational firm. They are based in Singapore and Boston, respectively.

    That may matter little to policymakers. As US-China tensions remain high, American legislators have increased attempts to restrict technology linked in any way to foreign entities.

    Earlier this month, a US congressional commission called out Shein and Temu in a report that suggested the companies and others in China were potentially linked to the use of forced labor, exploitation of trade loopholes, product safety hazards or intellectual property theft.

    Both firms have enjoyed major success in the United States, noted Nicholas Kaufman, a policy analyst for the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. This “has encouraged both established Chinese e-commerce platforms and startups to copy their model, posing risks and challenges to US regulations, laws, and principles of market access,” he wrote.

    Temu and Shein have racked up tens of millions of US users

    Shein: 24.5 millionTemu: 22.8 million

  • Note: US monthly active users, as of April 19
  • Source: Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm

“Like Shein, Temu’s success raises flags about its business practices,” Kaufman added.

Asked about the report, Shein said in a statement that it “takes visibility across our supply chain seriously.”

“For over a decade, we have been providing customers with on-demand and affordable fashion, beauty, and lifestyle products, lawfully and with full respect for the communities we serve,” a spokesperson said.

Temu did not respond to a request for comment.

Temu and Shein have taken the world’s largest retail market — the United States — by storm.

Temu, which runs a marketplace for virtually everything from home goods to apparel to electronics, was launched by PDD Holdings

(PDD) last year. It has quickly become the most downloaded app in the United States, and continues to expand its user base.

PDD was founded in China but recently began billing itself as a Cayman Islands company, citing a new corporate registration there. As of a February regulatory filing, PDD’s head office was in Shanghai. Temu says it doesn’t operate in China.

PDD also owns Pinduoduo, a hugely popular Chinese e-commerce giant that was found in a recent CNN investigation to have the ability to spy on its users.

According to cybersecurity researchers, Pinduoduo can circumvent users’ mobile security to see what they’re doing on other apps, read their messages and even change settings.

While Temu has not been implicated, the allegations about its sister company have invited further scrutiny and were cited in the Congress report on Temu this month. PDD did not respond to CNN’s multiple requests for comment on the investigation.

Shein, which was founded by Chinese entrepreneur Chris Xu, has enjoyed similar success with its app over the last few years. The company initially created a cult following for its fast-fashion apparel and has since branched out into other offerings, such as home goods.

Both companies have gained traction stateside by offering extreme bargains to shoppers, many of whom continue to feel the squeeze from historically high inflation.

A shopper at a Shein pop-up store in New York last October. The company initially created a cult following for its fast-fashion apparel, and has since branched out into other offerings.

“The timing is very advantageous,” said Michael Felice, an associate partner in Kearney’s communications, media and technology practice. “You have extreme pressure on the consumer wallet right now.”

While Temu and Shein may appear similar, they have different business models.

Temu operates as an online store, carrying merchandise from independent sellers. Shein, on the other hand, commissions its own goods through manufacturers it teams up with in what is effectively seen as a supersonic version of fast fashion.

For some consumers, the companies’ low prices have raised eyebrows.

“I think transparency and traceability of product is becoming more important,” said Felice. “When you’re starting to see price points that almost could be too good to be true, you start to ask yourself, ‘Is that too good to be true?’”

Felice also said there was a risk of Temu facing resistance from US consumers as a cross-border business.

“There’s a rising sense of nationalism in markets,” he said. “It will be interesting to see which one wins as the dual pressures of inflation and nationalism take hold on American consumers.”

Lawmakers are also getting more hawkish. While both Temu and Shein have taken steps to separate their businesses from links to China, geopolitical tensions are proving hard to shake off.

Last month, a bipartisan group of US senators introduced legislation that would give the government new powers, including a ban on foreign-linked producers of software.

In a fact sheet distributed by lawmakers, Temu’s surge on US app stores was described as an example of how Chinese consumer technology was becoming more popular.

A screenshot from Temu's commercial unveiled during the Super Bowl in February, encouraging consumers to

“From the history of the companies to where their products come from, it’s very hard to say you’re not related to China,” said Sheng Lu, an associate professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware.

Similar to TikTok, which faces the prospect of a US ban, Lu believes that Temu and Shein could face data privacy concerns from regulators.

“They’re large, influential and collect data,” he said. “This can make the companies a potential sensitive topic.”

The fashion industry is responsible for 10% of annual global carbon emissions, more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. Around 85% of clothing ends up in landfills or is burned.

Experts say the problem is even worse with fast fashion, defined as the rapid design and production of cheap and low-quality goods that respond to fleeting trends.

These are “disposable fashion companies,” said Maxine Bédat, founder of the New Standard Institute.

“That’s the crux of what they are. This stuff is not meant to last in your wardrobe,” she added. “Their business wouldn’t function if it did.”

Shein argues that its business model enables it to reduce waste and overproduction by producing small batches and only responding with larger production if demand is shown. The company has set a goal of reducing emissions by 25% by 2030, based on 2021 figures.

A model trying on outfits in Temu's Super Bowl ad. The company runs a marketplace for virtually everything, from apparel to home goods to electronics.

Temu, which markets itself more as a general store than a fashion outlet, also said its model limits unsold inventory and waste by better matching demand with supply.

The company told CNN it offsets emissions for every order with “carbon credits which support wildlife conservation efforts” in the United States, though it did not provide details.

Researchers who study textile waste and sustainability in global supply chains say the companies need to go further.

Shein, for example, often uses low-cost fabrics that are hard to recycle. Compared with other fashion retailers, the company has a much lower percentage of products that mention using sustainable or recycled textile materials, said Lu.

There are also concerns about the conditions of workers who make some of the companies’ products.

In February, a bipartisan group of US senators wrote to Shein, pressing the company on its supply chain practices and calling for greater transparency in its supply chain.

“We are concerned that American consumers may be inadvertently purchasing apparel made in part with cotton grown, picked, and processed using forced labor,” the senators said.

The inquiry was made following a Bloomberg report showing lab testing on two occasions last year found that garments shipped to the United States by Shein were made with cotton from Xinjiang. Washington has banned all imports from the Chinese region over concerns of forced labor.

In a statement to CNN, Shein said it was committed to respecting human rights and adhering to laws and regulations in the countries where it operates. A spokesperson said the company had zero tolerance for forced labor, and worked with third parties to audit supplier factories.

To ensure compliance with US laws, Shein requires that suppliers purchase cotton from approved countries, and has built tracing systems to get visibility into the origins of cotton it uses, the spokesperson added.

Temu has not faced such questions, though its sister company received backlash in 2021 over allegations that it overworks its staff. Pinduoduo said at the time that it would provide counseling following the suicide of a worker.

Worker rights at Shein also made headlines in December, when a documentary by UK broadcaster Channel 4 alleged exploitation at two Chinese factories belonging to its suppliers.

The program claimed staff were working 18 hours a day, making the equivalent of pennies on each item. CNN has not independently verified the allegations.

Shein responded to the claims, saying independent audits had refuted most of the allegations. But it conceded that the investigation had showed workers at two of its suppliers were working longer hours than allowed.

The company has since reduced the size of its orders from those producers on an interim basis, and committed $15 million to upgrade hundreds of its partner factories.

Still, the “working conditions of workers making Shein’s products remain a black box,” said Lu, the University of Delaware professor.

“Shein should be more transparent about their factory conditions and workers’ well-being.”

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  • Three GOP appointees, including 2 from Trump, will hear the next phase of major abortion pill case | CNN Politics

    Three GOP appointees, including 2 from Trump, will hear the next phase of major abortion pill case | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The New Orleans-based appeals court panel that will oversee the next stage in the blockbuster legal challenge to the availability of medication abortion drugs is made up of three Republican appointees, including one Trump nominee who has called abortion a “moral tragedy.”

    Circuit Judges James Ho and Cory Wilson, both Trump nominees, will hear the oral arguments on May 17, alongside Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, an appointee of George W. Bush.

    The lawsuit was brought by anti-abortion doctors and medical organizations who allege the US Food and Drug Administration broke the law when it approved the medication abortion drug mifepristone more than two decades ago.

    Last month, US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk agreed with their arguments and ruled that the approval of the drug should be suspended. 

    However, his ruling was put on hold by the Supreme Court on April 21 and it will remain on hold until the case goes back to the high court, regardless of how the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals rules on the merits.

    Ho, a former Texas solicitor general, is considered one of the most conservative and strident members of the 5th Circuit, having described abortion as a “moral tragedy” in a 2018 concurring opinion.

    In a 2019 concurring opinion, Ho also said that a trial judge’s ruling – which struck down a 15-week abortion ban and which was affirmed by the 5th Circuit under the then-standing Roe precedent – displayed “an alarming disrespect for the millions of Americans who believe that babies deserve legal protection during pregnancy as well as after birth, and that abortion is the immoral, tragic, and violent taking of innocent human life.”

    The 5th Circuit is considered one of the most conservative in the country has consistently ruled against the Biden Justice Department.

    Wilson earlier this year wrote a majority circuit opinion that said that a federal law that bars gun ownership by people under domestic violence was unconstitutional.

    Elrod penned an opinion last month that struck down the federal ban on bump stocks, which are attachments that essentially allow shooters to fire semiautomatic rifles continuously with one pull of the trigger.

    The medication abortion case is another hugely consequential case to go through the circuit. Mifepristone – the drug being targeted in the lawsuit – is the first pill in the two-pill regimen for terminating a pregnancy. Medication abortion makes up more than half of all abortions obtained in the United States.

    In filings last week, the Justice Department told the 5th Circuit that Kacsmaryk’s conclusions that the drug was unsafe rested “on a series of fundamental errors.”

    “While FDA justified its scientific conclusions in multiple detailed reviews, including a medical review spanning more than 100 pages and assessing dozens of studies and other scientific information, the district court swept the agency’s judgments aside by substituting its own lay understanding of purportedly contrary studies, offering demonstrably erroneous characterizations of the record,” the DOJ’s filing said. 

    The department’s opponents in the case will file a response later on Monday.

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  • The man behind ChatGPT is about to have his moment on Capitol Hill | CNN Business

    The man behind ChatGPT is about to have his moment on Capitol Hill | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    For a few months in 2017, there were rumors that Sam Altman was planning to run for governor of California. Instead, he kept his day job as one of Silicon Valley’s most influential investors and entrepreneurs.

    But now, Altman is about to make a different kind of political debut.

    Altman, the CEO and co-founder of OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company behind viral chatbot ChatGPT and image generator Dall-E, is set to testify before Congress on Tuesday. His appearance is part of a Senate subcommittee hearing on the risks artificial intelligence poses for society, and what safeguards are needed for the technology.

    House lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are also expected to hold a dinner with Altman on Monday night, according to multiple reports. Dozens of lawmakers are said to be planning to attend, with one Republican lawmaker describing it as part of the process for Congress to assess “the extraordinary potential and unprecedented threat that artificial intelligence presents to humanity.”

    Earlier this month, Altman was one of several tech CEOs to meet with Vice President Kamala Harris and, briefly, President Joe Biden as part of the White House’s efforts to emphasize the importance of ethical and responsible AI development.

    The hearing and meetings come as ChatGPT has sparked a new arms race over AI. A growing list of tech companies have deployed new AI tools in recent months, with the potential to change how we work, shop and interact with each other. But these same tools have also drawn criticism from some of tech’s biggest names for their potential to disrupt millions of jobs, spread misinformation and perpetuate biases.

    As the CEO of OpenAI, Altman, perhaps more than any other single figure, has come to serve as a face for a new crop of AI products that can generate images and texts in response to user prompts. This week’s hearing may only cement his stature as a central player in AI’s rapid growth – and also add to scrutiny of him and his company.

    Those who know Altman have described him as a brilliant thinker, someone who makes prescient bets and has even been called “a startup Yoda.” In interviews this year, Altman has presented himself as someone who is mindful of the risks posed by AI and even “a little bit scared” of the technology. He and his company have pledged to move forward responsibly.

    “If anyone knows where this is going, it’s Sam,” Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, wrote in a post about Altman for the latter’s inclusion this year on Time’s list of the 100 most influential people. “But Sam also knows that he doesn’t have all the answers. He often says, ‘What do you think? Maybe I’m wrong?’ Thank God someone with so much power has so much humility.”

    Others want Altman and OpenAI to move more cautiously. Elon Musk, who helped found OpenAI before breaking from the group, joined dozens of tech leaders, professors and researchers in signing a letter calling for artificial intelligence labs like OpenAI to stop the training of the most powerful AI systems for at least six months, citing “profound risks to society and humanity.”

    Altman has said he agreed with parts of the letter. “I think moving with caution and an increasing rigor for safety issues is really important,” Altman said at an event last month. “The letter I don’t think was the optimal way to address it.”

    OpenAI declined to make anyone available for an interview for this story.

    The success of ChatGPT may have brought Altman greater public attention, but he has been a well-known figure in Silicon Valley for years.

    Prior to cofounding OpenAI with Musk in 2015, Altman, a Missouri native, studied computer science at Stanford University, only to drop out to launch Loopt, an app that helped users share their locations with friends and get coupons for nearby businesses.

    In 2005, Loopt was part of the first batch of companies at Y Combinator, a prestigious tech accelerator. Paul Graham, who co-founded Y Combinator, later described Altman as “a very unusual guy.”

    “Within about three minutes of meeting him, I remember thinking ‘Ah, so this is what Bill Gates must have been like when he was 19,’” Graham wrote in a post in 2006.

    Loopt was acquired in 2012 for about $43 million. Two years later, Altman took over from Graham as president of Y Combinator. The position allowed Altman to connect him with numerous powerful figures in the tech industry. He remained at the helm of the accelerator until 2019.

    Margaret O’Mara, a tech historian and professor at the University of Washington, told CNN that Altman “has long been admired as a thoughtful, significant guy and in the remarkably small number of powerful people who are kind of at the top of tech and have a lot of sway.”

    During the Trump administration, Altman gained new attention as a vocal critic of the president. It was against that backdrop that he was rumored to be considering a run for California governor.

    Rather than running, however, Altman instead looked to back candidates who aligned with his values, which include lower cost of living, clean energy and taking 10% off the defense budget to give to research and development of future technology.

    Altman continues to push for some of these goals through his work in the private sector. He invested in Helion, a fusion research company that inked a deal with Microsoft last week to sell clean energy to the tech giant by 2028.

    Altman has also been a proponent of the idea of a universal basic income and has suggested that AI could one day help fulfill that goal by generating so much wealth it could be redistributed back to the public.

    As Graham told The New Yorker about Altman in 2016, “I think his goal is to make the whole future.”

    When launching OpenAI, Musk and Altman’s original mission was to get ahead of the fear that AI could harm people and society.

    “We discussed what is the best thing we can do to ensure the future is good?” Musk told the New York Times about a conversation with Altman and others before launching the company. “We could sit on the sidelines or we can encourage regulatory oversight, or we could participate with the right structure with people who care deeply about developing A.I. in a way that is safe and is beneficial to humanity.”

    In an interview at the launch of OpenAI, Altman explained the company as his way of trying to steer the path of AI technology. “I sleep better knowing I can have some influence now,” he said.

    If there’s one thing AI enthusiasts and critics can agree on right now, it may be that Altman clearly has succeeded in having some influence over the rapidly evolving technology.

    Less than six months after the release of ChatGPT, it has become a household name, almost synonymous with AI itself. CEOs are using it to draft emails. Realtors are using it to write iistings and draft legal documents. The tool has passed exams from law and business schools – and been used to help some students cheat. And OpenAI recently released a more powerful version of the technology underpinning ChatGPT.

    Tech giants like Google and Facebook are now racing to catch up. Similar generative AI technology is quickly finding its way into productivity and search tools used by billions of people.

    A future that once seemed very far off now feels right around the corner, whether society is ready for it or not. Altman himself has professed not to be sure about how it will turn out.

    O’Mara said she believes Altman fits into “the techno-optimist school of thought that has been dominant in the Valley for a very long time,” which she describes as “the idea that we can devise technology that can indeed make the world a better place.”

    While Altman’s cautious remarks about AI may sound at odds with that way of thinking, O’Mara argues it may be an “extension” of it. In essence, she said, it’s related to “the idea that technology is transformative and can be transformative in a positive way but also has so much capacity to do so much that it actually could be dangerous.”

    And if AI should somehow help bring about the end of society as we know it, Altman may be more prepared than most to adapt.

    “I prep for survival,” he said in a 2016 profile of him in the New Yorker, noting several possible disaster scenarios, including “A.I. that attacks us.”

    “I try not to think about it too much,” Altman said. “But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”

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  • Fertility app fined $200,000 for leaking customer’s health data | CNN Business

    Fertility app fined $200,000 for leaking customer’s health data | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    The company behind a popular fertility app has agreed to pay $200,000 in federal and state fines after authorities alleged that it had shared users’ personal health information for years without their consent, including to Google and to two companies based in China.

    The app, known as Premom, will also be banned from sharing personal health information for advertising purposes and must ensure that the data it shared without users’ consent is deleted from third-party systems, according to the Federal Trade Commission, along with the attorneys general of Connecticut, the District of Columbia and Oregon.

    Wednesday’s proposed settlement targeting Premom highlights how regulators have stepped up their scrutiny of fertility trackers and health information in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s decision last year striking down federal protections for abortion.

    The sharing of personal data allegedly affected Premom’s hundreds of thousands of users from at least 2018 until 2020, and violated a federal regulation known as the Health Breach Notification Rule, according to an FTC complaint against Easy Healthcare, Premom’s parent company.

    Premom didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    As part of the alleged violation, Premom collected and shared personally identifiable health information with Google and with a third-party marketing firm in violation of Premom’s own privacy policy, which had promised to share only “non-identifiable data” with others, according to the complaint.

    In addition, Premom allegedly shared location information and device identifiers — such as WiFi network names and hardware IDs — with two China-based data analytics companies, known as Jiguang and Umeng, according to the complaint. That information, the FTC alleged, “could be used to identify Premom’s users and disclose to third parties that these users were utilizing a fertility app,” according to an FTC complaint filed against Easy Healthcare, Premom’s parent company.

    Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, a wave of anti-abortion legislation has raised the prospect that fertility apps, search engines and other technology platforms could be forced to hand over user data in potential prosecutions of abortion-seekers.

    “Now more than ever, with reproductive rights under attack across the country, it is essential that the privacy of healthcare decisions is vigorously protected,” said DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb in a statement. “My office will continue to make sure companies protect consumers’ personal information to protect against unlawful encroachment on access to effective reproductive healthcare.”

    Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s consumer protection bureau, said the agency “will not tolerate health privacy abuses.”

    “Premom broke its promises and compromised consumers’ privacy,” Levine said in a statement. “We will vigorously enforce the Health Breach Notification Rule to defend consumer’s health data from exploitation.”

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  • Golf’s new Saudi deal presents questionable political, business and sporting realities | CNN Politics

    Golf’s new Saudi deal presents questionable political, business and sporting realities | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The PGA Tour once advertised its brightest stars with the catch phrase “These guys are good.” A better slogan might now be “These guys are even richer.”

    In a bombshell announcement so staggering that many golf fans thought it was fake at first, the venerable PGA Tour unveiled a partnership Tuesday with Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund, the financier of its sworn rival LIV Golf – a breakaway circuit that split the sport and seeded feuds among its top players.

    The deal means that the PGA Tour – built on the image of quintessentially American Arnold Palmer, who epitomized post World War II US values – will now rest atop a pile of money put up by the regime that the US blamed for the murdering and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, that was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers of September 11, 2001, attack, and that has frequently been condemned by Washington for infringing women’s rights.

    It is beyond doubt that the new reality of pro-golf will mean a better spectacle for fans since it will end the split between the two rival tours and will also fold in the DP World Tour (formerly known as the European tour) and mean the brightest stars will play one another more often.

    For many sports fans in the US and elsewhere, that’s just fine. They like to plop down on the couch and watch their favorite golfer on the back nine on Sunday or their Gulf-owned Premier League team on TV. Who can begrudge them one oasis free from bitter, tribal modern politics?

    And the deal is also undeniably a great piece of business, assuming PGA Tour players accept it. Global golfers stand to win a lot more money, various tours will be invigorated and Saudi Arabia’s government and its ruthless leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), get to be associated with one of the planet’s most prestigious year-round sporting properties. And all pending litigation between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour was also mutually ended under the new agreement.

    But for others, Tuesday’s peace deal on the links raises painful moral issues. It also exposes top PGA leaders – who had blasted golfers who defected to LIV – to accusations of hypocrisy and reflects the way modern professional sports are hostage to the highest bidders. This can only pose uncomfortable questions to fans whose values and history clash with those of distant and sometimes politically dicey entities who effectively own their teams and top stars.

    PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, for instance, had some explaining to do – not least to the tour’s players gathered at the Canadian Open this week after many tweeted that they had no advance notice of the deal. Monahan had played the 9/11 card last year at the same event, saying that two families that were close to him had lost loved ones in the worst terror attack on American soil, adding, “I would ask any player that has left, or any player that would ever consider leaving, have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?”

    Now Monahan stands to be the effective supremo of global golf, save for the four majors – the sport’s most prestigious tournaments – aided by a gusher of Saudi cash.

    9/11 Families United effectively accused Monahan of using the tragedy as leverage in a business deal to reunite golf. He “co-opted the 9/11 community last year in the PGA’s unequivocal agreement that the Saudi LIV project was nothing more than sports washing of Saudi Arabia’s reputation,” the group said in a statement. “But now the PGA and Monahan appear to have become just more paid Saudi shills, taking billions of dollars to cleanse the Saudi reputation so that Americans and the world will forget how the Kingdom spent their billions of dollars before 9/11 to fund terrorism, spread their vitriolic hatred of Americans, and finance al Qaeda and the murder of our loved ones.”

    Monahan was asked about his reversal after what he said was a “heated” meeting with PGA Tour players on Tuesday.

    “I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite,” he said. “Anytime I said anything, I said it with the information that I had at that moment, and I said it based on someone that’s trying to compete for the PGA TOUR and our players.”

    Major champions who jumped to the rival circuit last year like Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Patrick Reed and Cam Smith might also now wonder whether their PGA tour brethren will face the same grilling over human rights that they had to endure at the time.

    One very famous golfer was delighted by the deal and seemed keen to claim some reflected credit – former President Donald Trump. The current front-runner for the 2024 GOP nomination associated himself with LIV after the PGA Tour and other golf governing bodies distanced themselves from him over his radioactive political reputation. Trump has hosted several tournaments at his courses for LIV – a circuit that sits well with his record of refusing to sever links with the Saudis over the murder of Khashoggi in 2018, reasoning that the Saudis were great customers of the US.

    “A big, beautiful, and glamorous deal for the wonderful world of golf. Congrats to all!!!” Trump wrote in block capital letters on his Truth Social platform.

    Some defenders of LIV golfers have pointed out that the players were only making a choice to prioritize personal interests over moral ones in partnering with the Saudis – a calculus that mirrored decades of US foreign policy. Indeed, President Joe Biden had called on the 2020 campaign trail for the kingdom to be treated as a “pariah” because of Khashoggi’s murder only to travel to the kingdom as president to fist-bump MBS when he needed a spike in oil price production to bring down American gas prices.

    On Tuesday, after the LIV/PGA partnership was announced, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken sat down for talks with the Crown Prince in Riyadh.

    The idea that politics and sport shouldn’t mix has always been quaint. The Olympics and the World Cup are two of the planet’s most political spectacles after all. And modern sport has long run on money as monster TV rights contracts translate into huge salaries for top soccer players, Formula One Drivers, NBA stars and the top names in other sports.

    But Tuesday’s LIV/PGA Tour agreement lays bare questions of morality so starkly precisely because of the way golf has sold itself. In a sport where players call penalties on themselves, and commentators idolize top players in whispered tones as paragons of gentlemanly conduct, patriotism and family values, the origin of the sport’s new financial lifeline is glaring.

    The PGA Tour and Saudi partnership may be the most prominent example yet of the phenomenon known as sports washing, whereby an authoritarian nation seeking to buff up its image – despite serious criticism over its political system and human rights performance – woos the world’s top sporting stars. China was accused of such an agenda with its 2008 and 2022 Summer and Winter Olympics, where attempts at political activism largely fizzled under its repressive rule. The Qatar World Cup last year was another example of a nation that used its financial muscle to present a new image to the world. Various controversies during the tournament over LGBTQ rights and the plight of workers who built the stadiums undercut global governing body FIFA’s pretensions to inclusion.

    The Saudis, Qataris and others are using their oil wealth to buy themselves a foothold among the world’s most powerful nations and to create tourism, entertainment and sporting legacies to sustain them when their reserves of carbon energy are depleted.

    This mirrors a global shift in power and especially financial muscle – from the capitals of Western Europe to new epicenters in the emerging economies of the Middle East, India and China. Soccer, like golf, is taking its share of the cash. Traditional working class football clubs knitted into their communities for decades in the UK, for example, now suddenly find themselves owned by foreign energy magnates. Premier League giant Manchester City was bought by a United Arab Emirates-led group. And Newcastle United is owned by a Saudi Arabia-led consortium, forcing fans to consider (or not) the ethical dimensions of their support for their hometown clubs. And global cricket has been transformed by the Indian Premier League, which pays lavish salaries in a shortened form of the game.

    One of the top names in soccer, Cristiano Ronaldo, is playing out the twilight of a glorious career spent at Europe’s top clubs in the up-and-coming Saudi league for a massive salary. And on Tuesday, Saudi team Al-Ittihad announced the signing of Real Madrid and French forward Karim Benzema, completing a sporting double whammy for the kingdom.

    There are as many sporting questions about the PGA Tour/LIV Golf partnership that remain unanswered. The partnership combines the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s golf-related commercial businesses and rights (including LIV Golf) with the commercial businesses and rights of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour into a new, collectively owned, for-profit entity. A spokesman for the PGA tour told CNN that the deal is not a merger.

    “After two years of disruption and distraction, this is a historic day for the game we all know and love,” Monahan said, describing a “transformational partnership” that would “benefit golf’s players, commercial and charitable partners and fans.”

    Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the Saudi Public Investment Fund, told CNBC he expected the partnership to be finalized within weeks and revealed, in a stunning move, that he had told LIV figurehead and Hall of Famer Greg Norman about the deal only moments before going on air.

    LIV lured some of the PGA Tour’s top stars with massive signing bonuses and huge purses at substantially fewer events than the PGA tour, prompting the premier US circuit to unveil its own select “designated events” with upped prize money. The two sides were locked in bitter legal battles that have now been resolved.

    It remains unclear, however, what steps LIV stars will have to take to potentially be able to return to events like The Players Championship, currently hosted on the PGA tour from which they were banned.

    Then there is the question of how current PGA Tour members will respond.

    Former British Open Champion Collin Morikawa tweeted, “I love finding out morning news on Twitter.”

    The sudden announcement also did not specify what would happen to LIV tour events, which have struggled to draw a strong TV audience, beyond this season. Monahan’s announcement did hint that the new entity was committed to the new format of team events that has been introduced by LIV, to compliment golf’s traditional reliance on individual tournaments.

    The golfer with the widest smile on Tuesday was probably Mickelson. The three-time Masters champion took the most heat for deserting the PGA tour for a reported massive payday, and was one of the most outspoken supporters of LIV – a breakaway he argued was a way to revolutionize the structure of professional golf and to secure more rewards for players.

    Mickelson was also open about the reality of partnering with the Saudis, calling them “scary m*therf**kers to get involved with,” in an interview with golf journalist Alan Shipnuck that he later claimed was off the record. Shipnuck has written that he offered Mickelson no such agreement.

    On Tuesday, Mickelson simply tweeted: “Awesome day today,” with a smiley sunshine emoji.

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  • Schumer outlines plan for how Senate will regulate AI | CNN Business

    Schumer outlines plan for how Senate will regulate AI | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced a broad, open-ended plan for regulating artificial intelligence on Wednesday, describing AI as an unprecedented challenge for Congress that effectively has policymakers “starting from scratch.”

    The plan, Schumer said at a speech in Washington, will begin with at least nine panels to identify and discuss the hardest questions that regulations on AI will have to answer, including how to protect workers, national security and copyright and to defend against “doomsday scenarios.” The panels will be composed of experts from industry, academia and civil society, with the first sessions taking place in September, Schumer said.

    The Senate will then turn to committee chairs and other vocal lawmakers on AI legislation to develop bills reflecting the panel discussions, Schumer added, arguing that the resulting US solution could leapfrog existing regulatory proposals from around the world.

    “If we can put this together in a very serious way, I think the rest of the world will follow and we can set the direction of how we ought to go in AI, because I don’t think any of the existing proposals have captured that imagination,” Schumer said, reflecting on other recent proposals such as the European Union’s draft AI Act, which last week was approved by the European Parliament.

    The speech represents Schumer’s most definitive remarks to date on a problem that has dogged Congress for months amid the wide embrace of tools such as ChatGPT: How to catch up, or get ahead, on policymaking for a technology that is already in the hands of millions of people and evolving rapidly.

    In the wake of ChatGPT’s viral success, Silicon Valley has raced to develop and deploy a new crop of generative AI tools that can produce images and writing almost instantly, with the potential to change how people work, shop and interact with each other. But these same tools have also raised concerns for their potential to make factual errors, spread misinformation and perpetuate biases, among other issues.

    In contrast to the fast pace of AI advancements, Schumer has stressed the importance of a deliberate approach, focusing on getting lawmakers acquainted with the basic facts of the technology and the issues it raises before seeking to legislate. He and three other colleagues began last week by convening the first in a series of closed-door briefings on AI for senators that is expected to run through the summer.

    In his remarks Wednesday, Schumer appeared to acknowledge criticism of his pace.

    “I know many of you have spent months calling on us to act,” he said. “I hear you. I hear you loud and clear.”

    But he described AI as a novel issue for which Congress lacks a guide.

    “It’s not like labor, or healthcare, or defense, where Congress has had a long history we can work off of,” he said. “Experts aren’t even sure which questions policymakers should be asking. In many ways, we’re starting from scratch.”

    Schumer described his plan as laying “a foundation for AI policy” that will do “years of work in a matter of months.”

    To guide that process, Schumer expanded on a set of principles he first announced in April. Formally unveiling the framework on Wednesday, Schumer said any legislation on AI should be geared toward facilitating innovation before addressing risks to national security or democratic governance.

    “Innovation first,” Schumer said, “but with security, accountability, [democratic] foundations and explainability.”

    The last two pillars of his framework, Schumer said, may be among the most important, as unrestricted artificial intelligence could undermine electoral processes or make it impossible to critically evaluate an AI’s claims.

    Schumer’s remarks were restrained in calling for any specific proposals. At one point, he acknowledged that a consensus may even emerge that recommends against major government intervention on the technology.

    But he was clear on one point: “We do — we do — need to require companies to develop a system where in simple and understandable terms users understand why the system produced a particular answer, and where that answer came from.”

    The Senate may still be a long way off from unveiling any comprehensive proposal, however. Schumer predicted that the process is likely to take longer than weeks but shorter than years.

    “Months would be the proper timeline,” he said.

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  • A flying car prototype just got an airworthiness certificate from the FAA | CNN Business

    A flying car prototype just got an airworthiness certificate from the FAA | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    The Federal Aviation Administration has certified for testing a vehicle that a California startup describes as a flying car — the first fully electric vehicle that can both fly and travel on roads to receive US government approval.

    Alef Automotive said that its vehicle/aircraft, dubbed the “Model A,” is the first flying vehicle that is drivable on public roads and able to park like a normal car. It also has vertical takeoff and landing capabilities. It apparently will be able to carry one or two occupants and will have a road-range of 200 miles and a flying range of 110 miles.

    The company expects to sell the vehicle for $300,000 each with the first delivery by projected for the end of 2025.

    The FAA confirmed that it has issued the company a special airworthiness certificate, allowing for limited purposes that include exhibition, research and development.

    Numerous companies are working on all-electric VTOLs, which stands for vehicle takeoff and landing aircraft. The FAA said that Alef is “not the first aircraft of its kind” to get a special airworthiness certificate. However, Alef noted that its vehicle is different because of its ability to function both on roads and in the air, to appear like a normal car and to park in a normal parking space.

    “We’re excited to receive this certification from the FAA. It allows us to move closer to bringing people an environmentally friendly and faster commute, saving individuals and companies hours each week. This is a one small step for planes, one giant step for cars,” said Jim Dukhovny, the CEO of Alef.

    The company’s website said the flying car will be a certified as a “low speed vehicle,” which means it won’t be able to go faster than about 25 miles per hour on a paved road. “The assumption is that, if a driver needs a faster route, a driver will use Alef’s flight capabilities,” the company posted on the site.

    Regardless, It also still needs approval from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to go on roads.

    Development has been underway on the vehicle since 2015. Four friends, Constantine Kisly, Pavel Markin, Oleg Petrov and Dukhovny, inspired by the “Back to the Future” movies (which foresaw flying cars being available in that year), decided to form a company to try to develop them.

    According to the company, an initial automated test flight of a skeleton version of the car was successfully conducted in 2018, and a full-size prototype was flown the following year. But Alef said that it needed the FAA’s special airworthiness certificate to continue conducting the necessary research and development.

    The company also said that earlier this year that it had taken refundable pre-orders for more than 400 of the vehicles, with the cost of $150 for to be in the general queue or $1,500 for the priority queue.

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  • 2024 GOP candidates race to meet donor and polling thresholds to make August debate stage | CNN Politics

    2024 GOP candidates race to meet donor and polling thresholds to make August debate stage | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump hasn’t yet committed to the first Republican presidential primary debate in August – but some of the former president’s most vocal critics within the party’s 2024 field are still working to qualify for the stage.

    The race to meet the 40,000 unique donors threshold set by the Republican National Committee as a minimum to qualify for the first debate – in addition to polling requirements and a commitment to support the eventual GOP nominee – is unfolding ahead of a showdown that could be the best chance for lower-polling candidates to break out from the pack seeking to stop Trump from winning a third straight presidential nomination.

    The threshold, which also requires at least 200 unique contributors from 20 or more states and territories, is a test of candidates’ ability to appeal to grassroots donors across a broad swath of the United States.

    Several candidates and their aides say they have already met that donor threshold, including Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former United Nations ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

    Lesser-known candidates are trying zany, rule-bending approaches to up their donation totals. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is swapping $20 gift cards for $1 campaign contributions. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez’s super PAC is offering entries to a free college tuition sweepstakes in exchange for contributions to his campaign.

    But the biggest question ahead of the August 23 showdown on Fox News is whether some of Trump’s foremost critics – including former Vice President Mike Pence, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former Texas Rep. Will Hurd – will qualify for the stage.

    Though they have raised substantial sums before, and Burgum has vast personal wealth to spend on the race, some candidates lack the small-dollar conservative base of donors that candidates like Trump and DeSantis have cultivated. And late entrances by Pence and Burgum further complicate their paths to the debate, which is being held in Milwaukee.

    Pence, in a Tuesday interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source,” indicated that he has not yet met the donor threshold.

    “You bet we’ll be on that debate stage. We’re working every day to get to that threshold,” Pence said. “I’m sure we’re going to be there.”

    However, the paltry second-quarter fundraising haul of $1.2 million that Pence’s campaign announced Friday underscored just how far the former vice president has to go to catch his top rivals.

    Pence – who often jokes on the campaign trail that he has already debated Trump many times in private – said he is hopeful his former ticket mate decides to take the stage.

    “I intend to be on that debate stage in late August, and I look forward to squaring off,” Pence said.

    Hutchinson said Friday on “CNN This Morning” that he has not yet reached 40,000 donors but believes he will eventually hit that mark.

    “It’s just a question of how quickly we can get there, but we want to be on that debate stage,” he said.

    The former Arkansas governor has been among the most vocal critics of the RNC’s debate qualification rules, pushing back for weeks against the minimum donor threshold.

    Hutchinson said Friday that some of the inventive gambits by his fellow candidates to attract the requisite donors “illustrate how silly this whole concept is. They’re telling campaigns you’ve got to reach these limits to make sure you get 40,000 donors. You can do that by your rhetoric and getting people fired up, you can do that by gimmicks, and so we’re going to have to do what we need to do to get there.”

    Hurd does not appear yet to have met the minimum donor threshold. “Will fully intends on meeting the donor and polling thresholds,” a campaign aide said Wednesday.

    North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum speaks to guests during a campaign stop at the Westside Conservative Breakfast Club meeting on June 9, 2023, in Ankeny, Iowa.

    Burgum, a wealthy former software executive, is offering $20 so-called “Biden economic relief cards” in the form of Visa or Mastercard gift cards to 50,000 donors who give at least $1. One solicitation Tuesday described it as a “better deal than anything you are seeing during Amazon Prime Day.”

    Burgum’s campaign on Friday announced an $11.7 million fundraising haul in the second quarter, but $10.2 miliion of that candidate’s own money.

    Perry Johnson, the little-known Michigan businessman, was at one point selling “I stand with Tucker” T-shirts backing the fired Fox News opinion host for $1.

    A super PAC backing Suarez on Thursday launched what it called “Francis Free College Tuition” – soliciting $1 contributions that would go to the candidate’s campaign to enter a sweepstakes that would offer the winner a year of paid college tuition up to $15,000.

    Suarez, unlike many other GOP candidates still racing to meet the donor threshold to qualify for the debate, has backed the RNC’s rules.

    “I do think there should a minimum criteria because time is valuable,” Suarez said Wednesday on “CNN This Morning.” “I think the Republican Party has tried to set a relatively low bar, and they’ve tried to create a diverse candidate pool so that people have options.”

    Ramaswamy’s campaign has said he already met the donor threshold – but his campaign recently launched a program to pay grassroots fundraisers 10% of the money they raise.

    Whether Christie would meet the donor threshold was a major question but one he seemed to settle on Wednesday night.

    “I am glad to be able to tell people tonight, Anderson, that last night we went past 40,000 unique donors in just 35 days,” Christie told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on “AC360.”

    Scott’s campaign on Wednesday also announced it had surpassed the 40,000 donor threshold, along with a $6.1 million second quarter fundraising haul. Scott, a prolific fundraiser as a Senate candidate, was widely considered a virtual lock to reach that minimum donor threshold.

    Another key benchmark to qualify for the debate stage is polling. Candidates must reach at least 1% in three national polls, or at least two national polls and two polls from separate early-voting states – Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina or Nevada.

    The RNC set criteria to determine which polls meet its standards to qualify toward the debate. The first poll to meet those RNC standards, a national survey by Morning Consult, found that Trump, DeSantis, Scott, Haley, Ramaswamy, Pence, Christie and Hutchinson had all reached the 1% minimum to count toward making the debate stage.

    Others still have zero qualifying polls toward the minimum qualifications for the first debate.

    Larry Elder, the conservative talk radio host and failed California gubernatorial nominee who is seeking the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination, complained in an opinion piece published Wednesday by The Hill that the RNC “has rigged the rules of the game by instituting a set of criteria that is so onerous and poorly designed that only establishment-backed and billionaire candidates are guaranteed to be on stage.”

    “That’s not what our party is about: We are the party of free speech, debate and the exchange of ideas. With 16 months until the general election, Republicans should have as many voices as the stage will accommodate. Anything short of that is elitism,” Elder said.

    The third requirement to make the August debate is a pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee in the 2024 general election.

    Some candidates, including Christie, have grumbled about the pledge but indicated they will agree to it because failing to do so would leave them no real path to the sort of attention needed to win the GOP nomination.

    Trump has privately discussed skipping either one or both of the first two Republican presidential primary debates, CNN reported in May. Since then he has not publicly said he would participate in the debate.

    DeSantis on Wednesday criticized Trump in an interview with Iowa conservative radio host Howie Carr over his refusal to commit to the debate.

    “Nobody is entitled to this nomination. You have got to earn the nomination,” DeSantis said, adding that debates are “important parts of the process.”

    “I will be in Milwaukee for the first debate, and I’ll be at all the debates because the American people deserve to hear from us directly about our vision for the country, and about how we’re going to be able to defeat Joe Biden,” he said.

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  • Thousands of authors demand payment from AI companies for use of copyrighted works | CNN Business

    Thousands of authors demand payment from AI companies for use of copyrighted works | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Thousands of published authors are requesting payment from tech companies for the use of their copyrighted works in training artificial intelligence tools, marking the latest intellectual property critique to target AI development.

    The list of more than 8,000 authors includes some of the world’s most celebrated writers, including Margaret Atwood, Dan Brown, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Franzen, James Patterson, Jodi Picoult and Philip Pullman, among others.

    In an open letter they signed, posted by the Authors Guild Tuesday, the writers accused AI companies of unfairly profiting from their work.

    “Millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays, and poetry provide the ‘food’ for AI systems, endless meals for which there has been no bill,” the letter said. “You’re spending billions of dollars to develop AI technology. It is only fair that you compensate us for using our writings, without which AI would be banal and extremely limited.”

    Tuesday’s letter was addressed to the CEOs of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Facebook-parent Meta, Google, Stability AI, IBM and Microsoft. Most of the companies didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Meta, Microsoft and Stability AI declined to comment.

    Much of the tech industry is now working to develop AI tools that can generate compelling images and written work in response to user prompts. These tools are built on large language models, which are trained on vast troves of information online. But recently, there has been growing pressure on tech companies over alleged intellectual property violations with this training process.

    This month, comedian Sarah Silverman and two authors filed a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Meta, while a proposed class-action suit accused Google of “stealing everything ever created and shared on the internet by hundreds of millions of Americans,” including copyrighted content. Google has called the lawsuit “baseless,” saying it has been upfront for years that it uses public data to train its algorithms. OpenAI did not previously respond to a request for comment on the suit.

    In addition to demanding compensation “for the past and ongoing use of our works in your generative AI programs,” the thousands of authors who signed the letter this week called on AI companies to seek permission before using the copyrighted material. They also urged the companies to pay writers when their work is featured in the results of generative AI, “whether or not the outputs are infringing under current law.”

    The letter also cites this year’s Supreme Court holding in Warhol v Goldsmith, which found that the late artist Andy Warhol infringed on a photographer’s copyright when he created a series of silk screens based on a photograph of the late singer Prince. The court ruled that Warhol did not sufficiently “transform” the underlying photograph so as to avoid copyright infringement.

    “The high commerciality of your use argues against fair use,” the authors wrote to the AI companies.

    In May, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared to acknowledge more needs to be done to address concerns from creators about how AI systems use their works.

    “We’re trying to work on new models where if an AI system is using your content, or if it’s using your style, you get paid for that,” he said at an event.

    – CNN’s Catherine Thorbecke contributed to this report.

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  • Twitter’s rebrand is the next stage in Elon Musk’s vision for the company. But does anyone want it? | CNN Business

    Twitter’s rebrand is the next stage in Elon Musk’s vision for the company. But does anyone want it? | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Elon Musk’s move over the weekend to rebrand Twitter and replace its iconic bird logo with an X is just the latest step in his effort to make over the billionaire’s longtime favorite platform in his image.

    When Musk bought Twitter late last year, he laid out a vision for an “everything” app called X, where users could communicate, shop, consume entertainment and more. Last June — prior to his takeover — Musk told Twitter employees that the platform should be more like China’s WeChat, where he said users “basically live on” the app because “it’s so usable and helpful to daily life.”

    The vision for the rebrand may go all the way back to Musk’s creation of the original X.com in 1999, which Musk hoped would be an all-in-one financial platform and which eventually became PayPal.

    Despite Musk’s longstanding ambitions — and the heightened stakes since he shelled out $44 billion to purchase the social network — ditching Twitter’s branding in service of a future super app is a significant risk.

    Twitter still has a long way to go if Musk wants to build out the kind of services WeChat is known for — everything from ordering groceries and booking yoga classes to paying bills and chatting with friends. And that’s not to mention the financial and competitive challenges the company faces merely existing in its current form, let alone launching a massive expansion. It’s also not clear how much demand there is for such a super app outside of China, given that efforts by other platforms to simply sell users on added shopping features have been slow to take off.

    “While Musk’s vision is to turn ‘X’ into an ‘everything app,’ this takes time, money, and people -— three things that the company no longer has,” Mike Proulx, research director and vice president at Forrester, said in an investor note. By ditching Twitter’s name, Proulx added, Musk “will have singlehandedly wiped out over fifteen years of a brand name that has secured its place in our cultural lexicon,” leaving him to start fresh at a precarious time for the company.

    The X branding has already started taking over Twitter.

    Musk — who bought Twitter with a company called X Corp. — tweeted on Sunday that X.com now redirects to Twitter. (Musk reportedly bought the X.com domain back from PayPal in 2017.)

    On Sunday night, the new stylized X logo was projected onto the company’s headquarters. And by Monday, the bird logo had been replaced by an X on Twitter’s website. Musk even told followers that tweets should instead be called “x’s.”

    On Sunday, CEO Linda Yaccarino seemed to confirm Musk’s vision for the company. “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity — centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities,” Yaccarino said in a tweet.

    Walter Isaacson, the legendary tech journalist who has been shadowing Musk to write his biography, tweeted on Sunday that Musk told him even before the Twitter acquisition that he wanted to use the social platform to fulfill his original, decades-old vision for X.com. “I am very excited about finally implementing X.com as it should have been done, using Twitter as an accelerant!” Musk texted Isaacson at 3:30 a.m. one morning last October, just ahead of his takeover, according to the writer.

    On Monday, Musk explained the move in a tweet saying, “The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140 character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting – but now you can post almost anything, including several hours of video.”

    “In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world,” Musk said. “The Twitter name does not make sense in that context.”

    (The rebrand also seems to be a continuation of a sort of obsession with the letter “X,” which also features in the name of one of Tesla’s cars, the Model X; the name of his rocket company, SpaceX; the name of his new artificial intelligence firm, xAI; and the name of two of his children, X Æ A-Xii and Exa Dark Sideræl.)

    In recent weeks, Twitter has quietly begun its effort to build out a payments business called Twitter Payments — the company was granted money transmitter licenses in four US states since last month, including Arizona and Michigan. Musk has discussed his desire to promote longer videos on Twitter. And he’s tried to shift Twitter’s business model away from advertising by allowing users to pay for verification, a strategy that has resulted in some chaos but only a limited number of actual subscriptions.

    Still, Musk faces obvious hurdles to turning Twitter into a fully-developed super app. Since acquiring Twitter, Musk has fired around 80% of its staff, scared away many of the advertisers that made up its core user base and frustrated many of its users with controversial policy decisions. And now, Twitter faces steep competition from Meta’s rival app Threads, which launched to stunning success, although its usage has petered off slightly in recent days.

    Musk last week also said that Twitter still has negative cash flow because of a 50% decline in ad revenue.

    Even if Musk does add new features to Twitter, many US tech platforms have struggled to succeed in imitating WeChat. Deloitte said in a report published last year that Western markets are unlikely to see “a single, dominant super-app like WeChat in the near term” because the services such apps would aim to bundle together, such as digital payments and ride hailing, already “have too many well-established players.”

    A 2019 effort by the social media giant then known as Facebook to create its own digital currency and payments system that the company said would make it easier to buy things online officially flopped last year following intense regulatory scrutiny. And both TikTok and Instagram have reportedly scaled back their ambitions to incorporate e-commerce onto their platforms after their shopping features failed to gain significant traction with users.

    And until Musk rolls out significant changes to the platform, observers of the company say ditching Twitter’s well-known brand is a risky move.

    “To rebrand without significant new features seems like a desperate attempt for attention,” especially in the wake of Meta’s launch of Threads, said Joshua White, assistant professor of finance at Vanderbilt University. “This is akin to buying Coke and changing the bottle and name without changing the formula — likely a mistake.”

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  • Supreme Court takes up case concerning Americans with Disabilities Act ‘tester’ of hotels | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court takes up case concerning Americans with Disabilities Act ‘tester’ of hotels | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The US Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a case concerning whether a self-appointed “tester” of the Americans with Disabilities Act has the right to sue hotels over alleged violations of the civil rights law.

    The court was asked to take the case by Acheson Hotels, which owns and operates a hotel in coastal Maine. The company was sued by Deborah Laufer, who they say has filed hundreds of lawsuits against hotels across the country, claiming their websites are not in compliance with ADA rules that require hotels to disclosure information about how accessible they are to individuals with disabilities.

    Though Laufer doesn’t intend to visit the hotels she’s suing, the lawsuits are brought in an effort to force the hotels to update their websites to be in compliance with the law.

    A district court dismissed Laufer’s suit against Acheson Hotels, ruling she lacked the procedural threshold – known as standing – needed to bring the suit. But an appeals court later ruled in her favor.

    Now, the justices will decide next term whether she has the right to act as a “tester” toward hotels she doesn’t intend to visit.

    “Laufer is one of numerous ‘testers’ who have collectively brought thousands of lawsuits under the ADA. A cottage industry has arisen in which uninjured plaintiffs lob ADA lawsuits of questionable merit, while using the threat of attorney’s fees to extract settlement payments,” the hotel told the justices in court papers. “These lawsuits have burdened small businesses, clogged the judicial system, and undermined the Executive Branch’s exclusive authority to enforce federal law.”

    The hotel run by Acheson Hotels has a notice posted to its website that says, “Please Note: Unfortunately, we do not have the capabilities to provide pet-friendly or ADA compliant lodging. We apologize for the inconvenience!”

    Laufer had urged the justices to take the case, with her attorneys arguing in court papers that they should affirm the appeals court ruling.

    “Without civil rights advocates such as this plaintiff, there would be no enforcement of the ADA,” they wrote in part.

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  • Where TikTok users may go if the app gets banned | CNN Business

    Where TikTok users may go if the app gets banned | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    On the eve of a high-profile TikTok hearing this week, the company shared that it now has more than 150 million US monthly active users. But after the heated, hours-long hearing, filled with lawmakers telling TikTok’s CEO the app should be banned, some may now be wondering where all those users will go next if the social network disappears.

    The answer: probably other big American tech platforms.

    Many of the largest US social media companies have spent years copying TikTok’s features, which would make a shift away from the platform easier for its creators and users. Instagram, for example, introduced its own short-form video tool in 2020 called Reels. Snapchat has Spotlight, YouTube has Shorts and even Spotify has a TikTok-like video feed with recommended music and other content.

    “Obviously, if a ban is approved and enforced, the content, user count and engagement, and likely ad dollars for Snap, Instagram, and YouTube will increase,” said Ali Mogharabi, an analyst at financial services firm Morningstar, in a recent investor’s note.

    In other words, Washington’s efforts to crack down on TikTok over national security concerns could ultimately benefit some of the same American tech companies that Washington has scrutinized for other reasons, including their market dominance and impact on teens.

    Even if a ban does not happen, it could still benefit these companies. “This uncertainty could push some TikTok content creators to focus more on, and possibly begin, pushing their audiences to other social network platforms,” Mogharabi said.

    At least one company is already seeing a boost. Snap’s stock rose in the days leading up to TikTok’s appearance before Congress amid renewed talks among federal officials of a TikTok ban.

    At the hearing on Thursday, TikTok CEO Shou Chew was grilled by lawmakers who expressed deep skepticism about his company’s attempts to protect US user data and ease concerns about its ties to China. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is based in Beijing and subject to Chinese data request laws that could require it to hand over user data to the government.

    Washington Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, opened Thursday’s hearing by telling Shou: “Your platform should be banned.” As the hearing was taking place, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he supports legislation that would effectively ban TikTok and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said TikTok should be “ended one way or another.”

    If that happens, Lian Jye Su, an analyst with ABI Search, believes users will follow their favorite TikTok influencers and content creators wherever they go.

    “Most users will flock to where the content creators go next,” Su said. “Instagram, Snapchat, and Youtube Shorts stand to benefit the most as content creators will still prefer places where they can monetize their content.”

    Smaller platforms have the opportunity to gain ground, too, Su said. Short-form video platform Triller, which reportedly has over 450 million users, is actively courting popular content creators from TikTok with cash bonuses, partnerships and other incentives to switch platforms. Meanwhile, Dubsmach – a Reddit-owned short video platform – and Clash, which allows people to create 21-second looping videos, are other platforms that could be increasingly appealing to creators.

    For now, talk of a TikTok ban may still be premature. The Biden administration has threatened to ban TikTok from the United States unless the app’s Chinese owners agree to spin off their share of the social media platform.

    “I strongly doubt this app will go dark,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi told CNN during a primetime special about TikTok on Thursday. He said a sale is most likely.

    If the app is sold, that could complicate matters for some US tech platforms.

    “For Snap, which has a weaker network effect than Meta, a possibly more trusted US TikTok may make it more difficult to attract users away from or keep them from migrating to TikTok,” Moghaharbi wrote in the investor’s note.

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  • Blinken speaks to Russian foreign minister about WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan | CNN Politics

    Blinken speaks to Russian foreign minister about WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke Sunday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and called for the “immediate release” of detained Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, according to the US State Department.

    “Secretary Blinken conveyed the United States’ grave concern over Russia’s unacceptable detention of a U.S. citizen journalist,” a readout from the department said.

    “Secretary Blinken further urged the Kremlin to immediately release wrongfully detained U.S. citizen Paul Whelan,” the readout continued, adding that the secretary and Lavrov “also discussed the importance of creating an environment that permits diplomatic missions to carry out their work.”

    Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter based in Russia, was detained last week on charges of espionage – the first time an American journalist has been detained on such accusations by Moscow since the Cold War. US officials in Moscow had not yet been granted consular access to Gershkovich as of Sunday.

    The Journal’s editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, said Sunday that the call between Blinken and Lavrov was “hugely reassuring.”

    “We know that the US government is taking the case very seriously right up to the top,” she told CBS News.

    Whelan, meanwhile, is serving out a 16-year prison sentence for the same charges, which he strongly denies. His brother David Whelan said in an email to the press Thursday that his family was sorry to hear “that another American family will have to experience the same trauma that we have had to endure for the past 1,553 days.”

    Whelan has been designated as wrongfully detained by the US State Department, and Gershkovich is expected to receive the same designation but had not yet as of Sunday morning. Tucker said she hopes the US government will act swiftly to label Gershkovich as wrongfully detained, saying it will be anofficial recognition that the charges against the reporter are “entirely bogus.”

    The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Sunday’s phone call was initiated by the US and that Lavrov told Blinken that Gershkovich’s fate would be determined by a Russian court.

    Lavrov also blamed Washington and the Western press for politicizing the arrest.

    “It was emphasized that it is unacceptable for officials in Washington and Western media to hype up [the issue] with the clear intention of giving this case a political coloring,” the statement said.

    Gershkovich is currently being held in the notorious Lefortovo pre-detention center until May 29. He faces up to 20 years in prison on espionage charges.

    Sunday’s call was only the third time that Blinken has spoken with his Russian counterpart since the war in Ukraine began, and all of those conversations have discussed detained US citizens. The two spoke in person for the first time since the war broke out on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers meeting in India last month, and Blinken said he raised the issues of the war, Russia’s suspension of its participation in the New START nuclear agreement, and Whelan’s ongoing detention.

    The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee on Sunday expressed support for the Biden administration’s efforts to negotiate with Russia for Gershkovich’s release.

    “Certainly the Biden administration should continue its efforts to negotiate and to try to get the release of this journalist, but overall, people should be very cautious about staying in Russia,” Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

    Turner noted that the US government “gave people notice that they should get out of Russia” and said he would continued to encourage people to do so. The Biden administration has echoed those assessments. While the Kremlin has asserted that Russia is safe for accredited journalists, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told CNN on Friday, “Russia is not safe for Americans.”

    Turner appeared on “State of the Union” on Sunday from southern Poland, where he said he is “meeting with those who are active in intelligence and meeting with our servicemembers who are active in the support of Ukraine.”

    Pressed by Bash on remarks by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley that the war in Ukraine will likely not be won this year, the Ohio lawmaker appeared to agree.

    “One thing I can tell you is that Russia is not going to win either,” he said. “This is a war that Russia is not winning, and they’re not winning it because Ukraine realizes that they’re standing up for democracy, they’re fighting for their country. And as they continue to do so, the United States’ assistance and certainly the assistance of our NATO allies and partners are making a huge turnout for the battlefield.”

    This story has been updated with additional reaction.

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  • How your phone learned to see in the dark | CNN Business

    How your phone learned to see in the dark | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Open up Instagram at any given moment and it probably won’t take long to find crisp pictures of the night sky, a skyline after dark or a dimly lit restaurant. While shots like these used to require advanced cameras, they’re now often possible from the phone you already carry around in your pocket.

    Tech companies such as Apple, Samsung and Google are investing resources to improve their night photography options at a time when camera features have increasingly become a key selling point for smartphones that otherwise largely all look and feel the same from one year to the next.

    Earlier this month, Google brought a faster version of its Night Sight mode, which uses AI algorithms to lighten or brighten images in dark environments, to more of its Pixel models. Apple’s Night mode, which is available on models as far back as the iPhone 11, was touted as a premier feature on its iPhone 14 lineup last year thanks to its improved camera system.

    These tools have come a long way in just the past few years, thanks to significant advancements in artificial intelligence technology as well as image processing that has become sharper, quicker, and more resilient to challenging photography situations. And smartphone makers aren’t done yet.

    “People increasingly rely on their smartphones to take photos, record videos, and create content,” said Lian Jye Su, an artificial intelligence analyst at ABI Research. “[This] will only fuel the smartphone companies to up their games in AI-enhanced image and video processing.”

    While there has been much focus lately on Silicon Valley’s renewed AI arms race over chatbots, the push to develop more sophisticated AI tools could also help further improve night photography and bring our smartphones closer to being able to see in the dark.

    Samsung’s Night mode feature, which is available on various Galaxy models but optimized for its premium S23 Ultra smartphone, promises to do what would have seemed unthinkable just five to 10 years ago: enable phones to take clearer pictures with little light.

    The feature is designed to minimize what’s called “noise,” a term in photography that typically refers to poor lighting conditions, long exposure times, and other elements that can take away from the quality of an image.

    The secret to reducing noise, according to the company, is a combination of the S23 Ultra’s adaptive 200M pixel sensor. After the shutter button is pressed, Samsung uses advanced multi-frame processing to combine multiple images into a single picture and AI to automatically adjust the photo as necessary.

    “When a user takes a photo in low or dark lighting conditions, the processor helps remove noise through multi-frame processing,” said Joshua Cho, executive vice president of Samsung’s Visual Solution Team. “Instantaneously, the Galaxy S23 Ultra detects the detail that should be kept, and the noise that should be removed.”

    For Samsung and other tech companies, AI algorithms are crucial to delivering photos taken in the dark. “The AI training process is based on a large number of images tuned and annotated by experts, and AI learns the parameters to adjust for every photo taken in low-light situations,” Su explained.

    For example, algorithms identify the right level of exposure, determine the correct color pallet and gradient under certain lighting conditions, sharpen blurred faces or objects artificially, and then makes those changes. The final result, however, can look quite different from what the person taking the picture saw in real time, in what some might argue is a technical sleight-of-hand trick.

    Lights illuminate the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, in this photo taken using Google Pixel 5 Night Sight setting.

    Google is also focused on reducing noise in photography. Its AI-powered Night Sight feature captures a burst of longer-exposure frames. It then uses something called HDR+ Bracketing, which creates several photos with different settings. After a picture is taken, the images are combined together to create “sharper photos” even in dark environments “that are still incredibly bright and detailed,” said Alex Schiffhauer, a group product manager at Google.

    While effective, there can be a slight but noticeable delay before the image is ready. But Schiffhauer said Google intends to speed up this process more on future Pixel iterations. “We’d love a world in which customers can get the quality of Night Sight without needing to hold still for a few seconds,” Schiffhauer said.

    Google also has an astrophotography feature which allows people to take shots of the night sky without needing to tweak the exposure or other settings. The algorithms detect details in the sky and enhances them to stand out, according to the company.

    Apple has long been rumored to be working on an astrophotography feature, but some iPhone 14 Pro Max users have successfully been able to capture pictures of the sky through its existing Night Mode tool. When a device detects a low-light environment, Night mode turns on to capture details and brighten shots. (The company did not respond to a request to elaborate on how the algorithms work.)

    AI can make a difference in the image, but the end results for each of these features also depend on the phone’s lenses, said Gartner analyst Bill Ray. A traditional camera will have the lens several centimeters from the sensor, but the limited space on a phone often requires squeezing things together, which can result in a more shallow depth of field and reduced image quality, especially in darker environments.

    “The quality of the lens is still a big deal, and how the phone addresses the lack of depth,” Ray said.

    While night photography on phones has come a long way, a buzzy new technology could push it ahead even more.

    Generative AI, the technology that powers the viral chatbot ChatGPT, has earned plenty of attention for its ability to create compelling essays and images in response to user prompts. But these AI systems, which are trained on vast troves of online data, also have potential to edit and process images.

    “In recent years, generative AI models have also been used in photo-editing functions like background removal or replacement,” Su said. If this technology is added to smartphone photo systems, it could eventually make night modes even more powerful, Su said.

    Big Tech companies, including Google, are already fully embracing this technology in other parts of their business. Meanwhile, smartphone chipset vendors like Qualcomm and MediaTek are looking to support more generative AI applications natively on consumer devices, Su said. These include image and video augmentation.

    “But this is still about two to three years away from limited versions of this showing up on smartphones,” he said.

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  • Twitter descends into chaos as news outlets and brands lose verification | CNN Business

    Twitter descends into chaos as news outlets and brands lose verification | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Twitter users awoke Friday morning to even more chaos on the platform than they had become accustomed to in recent months under CEO Elon Musk after a wide-ranging rollback of blue check marks from celebrities, journalists and government agencies.

    The end of traditional verification marked the beginning of a radically different information regime on Twitter, one highlighted by almost immediate impersonations of government accounts; the removal of labels previously used to identify Chinese and Russian propaganda; and a scramble by the company to individually re-verify certain high-profile figures such as Pope Francis.

    A broad array of media organizations lost the gold verification badges Musk’s team had developed months earlier as an alternative to traditional brand verification, reflecting those organizations’ apparent refusal to pay for the badges that now cost $1,000 a month.

    Several prominent Twitter users including LeBron James, William Shatner and Stephen King also refused to pay to keep their verification badges, prompting Musk to personally intervene. Appearing to sense the problems that might ensue if those users went unverified, Musk said Thursday he would pay out of his own pocket to ensure James, Shatner and King’s profiles continued to be verified.

    “My Twitter account says I’ve subscribed to Twitter Blue. I haven’t. My Twitter account says I’ve given a phone number. I haven’t,” King tweeted.

    “You’re welcome namaste,” Elon replied, adding a prayer emoji.

    Though some of the most visible issues with the rollout could be ironed out in the coming days, the broader impact of the change has been to make it more difficult for users to determine an account’s authenticity and potentially to undermine Twitter’s central role as a hub for news. Twitter verification is no longer an indicator that an account represents who it claims to represent; instead, it reflects that a user – or, apparently, the owner of Twitter – paid for Twitter Blue, the company’s subscription service.

    Earlier experiments with changes to verification had led to similar chaos, prompting Twitter to postpone the rollout multiple times. Twitter continued to move forward with its paid verification strategy, however, with the hope of bolstering subscription revenue after seeing a sharp decline in its core ad sales business.

    After Thursday’s change removed verification from New York City’s official government account, the account tweeted Thursday evening: “This is an authentic Twitter account representing the New York City Government.”

    Later, another Twitter account bearing the same profile image and a slight variation on the official account’s username replied to that tweet.

    “No, you’re not,” the impostor account said. “THIS account is the only authentic Twitter account representing and run by the New York City Government.”

    By Friday morning, the city’s verification had been restored with a gray check mark indicating it was a “government or multilateral organization account.” The same had occurred with Pope Francis, who had also lost his blue check mark Thursday.

    In a seemingly unrelated and coincidental change, Twitter also stripped the “government-funded media” label from accounts belonging to Canada’s CBC and NPR, the latter of which had quit Twitter over the labeling because NPR said the label misrepresented the news organization’s editorial independence from the US government.

    Twitter also removed the “state-affiliated media” labels from accounts belonging to China’s Xinhua News and Russia’s RT.

    According to NPR, Musk dropped all media labeling on Twitter following a suggestion from the author Walter Isaacson, who is writing a biography of Musk. Isaacson, who is verified on Twitter as a subscriber to Twitter Blue, tweeted a photo of Musk on Thursday from SpaceX’s Starship launch site. The rocket exploded in midair.

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  • Justice Department challenges Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors | CNN Politics

    Justice Department challenges Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Justice Department on Wednesday filed a complaint challenging a recently enacted Tennessee bill that prohibits gender-affirming care for minors, saying it “denies necessary medical care to youth based solely on who they are.”

    DOJ argues in its complaint that the legislation violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by discriminating on the basis of both sex and transgender status and asks the court to issue an immediate order to block the law from taking effect on July 1.

    “SB 1 makes it unlawful to provide or offer to provide certain types of medical care for transgender minors with diagnosed gender dysphoria. SB 1’s blanket ban prohibits potential treatment options that have been recommended by major medical associations for consideration in limited circumstances in accordance with established and comprehensive guidelines and standards of care,” a news release from the department states. “By denying only transgender youth access to these forms of medically necessary care while allowing non-transgender minors access to the same or similar procedures, SB 1 discriminates against transgender youth.”

    In a statement to CNN, Gov. Bill Lee said, “Tennessee is committed to protecting children from permanent, life-altering decisions. This is federal overreach at its worst, and we will work with Attorney General Skrmetti to push back in court and stand up for children.”

    Senate Bill 0001, signed into law by the Republican governor last month, prohibits health care providers “from performing on a minor or administering to a minor a medical procedure if the performance or administration of the procedure is for the purpose of enabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex.”

    The legislation specifies that minors who receive care cannot be held liable but lawsuits could be brought against their parents “if the parent of the minor consented to the conduct that constituted the violation on behalf of the minor.” It also grants the attorney general the authority to fine health care professionals who provide the care with a civil penalty of $25,000 per violation.

    Gender-affirming care that began prior to July 1 is not considered a violation “provided that the treating physician must make a written certification that ending the medical procedure would be harmful to the minor,” though access to such care must conclude by March 31, 2024. The legislation expresses concern over long-term outcomes and questions whether minors are capable of making such consequential decisions.

    Major medical associations agree that gender-affirming care is clinically appropriate for children and adults with gender dysphoria, which, according to the American Psychiatric Association, is psychological distress that may result when a person’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth do not align.

    Though the care is highly individualized, some children may decide to use reversible puberty suppression therapy. This part of the process may also include hormone therapy that can lead to gender-affirming physical change. Surgical interventions, however, are not typically done on children and many health care providers do not offer them to minors.

    US Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Henry Leventis said in a statement that SB 1 violates the constitutional rights of the state’s “most vulnerable victims.”

    “Left unchallenged, it would prohibit transgender children from receiving health care that their medical providers and their parents have determined to be medically necessary. In doing so, the law seeks to substitute the judgment of trained medical professionals and parents with that of elected officials and codifies discrimination against children who already face far too many obstacles,” Leventis said.

    Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in the news release that “no person should be denied access to necessary medical care just because of their transgender status.”

    “The right to consider your health and medically-approved treatment options with your family and doctors is a right that everyone should have, including transgender children, who are especially vulnerable to serious risks of depression, anxiety and suicide,” Clarke said.

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  • Top moments from the White House Correspondents’ dinner | CNN Politics

    Top moments from the White House Correspondents’ dinner | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden joked about a range of topics at the White House Correspondents’ dinner on Saturday but struck a serious tone as he called for the release of wrongfully detained Americans abroad.

    The annual dinner, hosted inside the Washington Hilton, drew thousands of guests in support of freedom of the press, something Biden called “the pillar of a free society, not the enemy.”

    Here are the top moments from this year’s dinner.

    Biden used the opportunity to address a crowd gathered to support freedom of the press to send a clear message: “Journalism is not a crime.”

    He began his remarks on a serious note and immediately addressed the wrongful detentions of American journalists Evan Gershkovich in Russia and Austin Tice in Syria, reassuring the room full of journalists and the families of the detainees that his administration is committed to bringing them home.

    “I promise you, I’m working like hell to get them home,” Biden said.

    In attendance Saturday evening was Brittney Griner, the WNBA star who was freed from Russia late last year after being wrongfully detained. Biden and First Lady Jill Biden held a pull-aside meeting with Griner and her wife at the event, per the White House pool.

    The president and First Lady also met privately with the family of Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter that the US State Department has deemed “wrongfully detained” in Russia. Several journalists in attendance wore pins to urge his release.

    The daughter of jailed Russian opposition figure Alexey Navanly, Dasha Navalnaya, told CNN earlier Saturday the White House Correspondents’ dinner represents an especially important event for those who are wrongfully detained because “America as a country represents freedom of speech, freedom of political expression.”

    Comedian Roy Wood Jr., known for his role on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” did not hold back in his roast of Washington politics Saturday evening, saving jabs for both parties.

    He immediately addressed the classified documents found in Biden’s Delaware home, telling the president as he stepped aside from the podium, “Real quick, Mr. President. I think you left some of your classified documents up here.”

    Wood also pointed to protests in France in response to the government raising the retirement age. “Meanwhile in America, we have an 80-year-old man begging us for four more years of work,” he quipped, alluding to Biden’s reelection bid.

    But the comedian went on to dub former President Donald Trump the “king of scandals.”

    “Keeping up with Trump scandals is like watching Star Wars movies,” he said. “You got to watch the third one to understand the first one, then you got – you can’t miss the second one because it’s got Easter eggs for the fifth one.”

    Watch: Iconic moments from past White House Correspondents’ dinners

    Biden’s jokes, meanwhile included a number of quips aimed at his predecessor’s recent scandals.

    He joked that he was offered $10 to keep his remarks under ten minutes. “That’s a switch, a president being offered hush money,” he joked in reference to Trump’s indictment in an alleged hush money scheme.

    Biden also poked fun at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is likely to be top candidate for the GOP presidential nomination if he enters the 2024 race.

    “I had a lot of Ron DeSantis jokes ready, but Mickey Mouse beat the hell out of me, he got there first,” Biden said.

    Disney filed a lawsuit against the governor and his oversight board earlier this week, accusing him of punishing the company for exercising its free speech rights with his political influence.

    The White House Correspondents’ dinner honored several journalists for their impactful work last year, including CNN’s Phil Mattingly for his coverage of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Washington and Politico’s publishing of the Supreme Court draft opinion that would later overturn Roe v. Wade.

    While Biden also applauded the journalists for their work, he poked fun at their tough questioning.

    “I get that age is a completely reasonable issue, it’s on everybody’s mind,” he said, referring to his reelection bid. “By everyone I mean the New York Times.”

    Biden also joked about how he dodges the media’s questions. “In a lot of ways, this dinner sums up my first two years in office: I’ll talk for 10 minutes, take zero questions and cheerfully walk away.”

    In recent weeks, the media industry has taken several hits – from high-profile terminations to layoffs, something Wood addressed head on.

    “The untouchable Tucker Carlson is out of a job,” Wood said, referring to the anchor’s departure from Fox News, which prompted applause.

    “Okay, some people celebrate it,” he responded. “But to Tucker’s staff, I want you to note that I know what you’re feeling. I work at the Daily Show, so I too have been blindsided by the sudden departure of the host of a fake news program.”

    Saturday’s event saw a number of celebrities in attendance, including model and TV personality Chrissy Teigen and her husband, singer John Legend.

    Actress Julia Fox posed with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer while actress Rosario Dawson and actors Liev Schreiber and Billy Eichner all took turns on the red carpet.

    During the event, identical twin brothers Drew and Jonathan Scott, who host “Property Brothers” on HGTV, drew big laughs as their sketch-style video showcased how they would renovate the White House.

    “We’ve been doing this a long time and we think we know how to turn the White House into the White Home,” the pair said in video.

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  • ProPublica: GOP megadonor paid private school tuition for grandnephew of Justice Clarence Thomas | CNN Politics

    ProPublica: GOP megadonor paid private school tuition for grandnephew of Justice Clarence Thomas | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A Texas billionaire and GOP megadonor paid boarding school tuition for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ grandnephew, and the justice did not report the financial assistance for the child he helped raised on his annual disclosures, according to a new ProPublica report – the latest revelation raising ethical questions around the high court.

    The ProPublica report on Thursday revealed that the billionaire Harlan Crow paid tuition for Mark Martin, who lived with Thomas’ family as a child and for whom the justice became a legal guardian. ProPublica cited a 2009 bank statement and an interview with a former administrator at the Georgia boarding school Martin attended.

    The former administrator at the school, Hidden Lake Academy, told ProPublica that Crow paid for Martin’s tuition for the year or so Martin was at the boarding school. The administrator said, according to ProPublica, that he had been told by Crow that Crow also paid for Martin’s tuition at another school, the Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia, which is Crow’s alma mater.

    A statement from Crow’s office did not address the payments for Martin’s tuition directly but said that he and his wife had “supported many young Americans through scholarship and other programs at a variety of schools, including his alma mater.”

    A friend and defender of Thomas, conservative lawyer Mark Paoletta, said on Twitter that Crow paid for the first year that Martin spent Randolph-Macon Academy and for the year he spent at Hidden Lake. Paoletta denied that Thomas ran afoul of the court’s financial disclosures rules by not reporting the payments, arguing that Martin did not qualify as a legal dependent under the federal ethics law in question.

    However, on the justice’s 2002 financial disclosure submission, Thomas reported as a gift $5,000 from another couple that was characterized as an “Education gift to Mark Martin.”

    The Supreme Court’s press office did not respond to requests seeking comment from the court and Thomas.

    ProPublica previously reported that for years, Thomas has accepted lavish trips and gifts from Crow, which have gone mostly unreported on the justice’s financial disclosures, and that Crow also purchased several real estate properties, including the home where his mother lives, from the Thomas family.

    The extent to which these transactions and hospitality should have been reported by Thomas has been the subject of debate among judicial ethics experts, who have noted that a recently-closed loophole for certain “personal hospitality” may have covered some of the luxury trips.

    Thomas has said he followed the advice of others in deciding what required disclosure, and a source close to Thomas previously told CNN that the justice plans to amend his disclosure forms to reflect the real estate transaction, which also went unreported. Thomas also said in a statement last month that Crow “did not have business before the court.”

    Nevertheless, court reforms advocates and Democratic lawmakers say that Thomas’ conduct shows that the current ethics rules for the justices – who are not subject to a code of conduct akin to the standards imposed on lower courts – are too lax.

    Amid the ethics firestorm, which included a Senate hearing this week, Chief Justice John Roberts and the other eight justices released a “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices” last week that the court’s critics say did not go far enough to address their concerns.

    “Today’s report continues a steady stream of revelations calling Justices’ ethics standards and practices into question,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin in a statement on Thursday. “I hope that the Chief Justice understands that something must be done – the reputation and credibility of the Court is at stake.”

    Republicans have pushed back on Democrats’ calls that Congress step in to enact stricter ethics rules for the justices, but some GOP lawmakers have acknowledged they’d like to see the high court – on its own – take steps towards greater transparency.

    Asked Thursday about the latest ProPublica report, Sen. Mitt Romney said, “I hope they’ll look – they’ll evaluate.”

    “I have no way of knowing the accuracy of that report and what’s been done but it clearly justifies taking a good look at it,” the Utah Republican said.

    Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he wasn’t going to speak to the specifics of the new allegations against Thomas, “because I could sit here and talk about other instances from other justices that the fact patterns are similar.”

    “Which goes back to the point of the Supreme Court should address this and they should address it on a consensus basis,” Tillis said.

    Ethics experts who spoke to ProPublica also acknowledged that the tuition payments, if considered a gift to Martin, may not have required disclosure. But since Thomas was Martin’s legal guardian, according to ProPublica’s report, he would have had responsibility for the child’s education and the tuition could also be viewed as an unreported gift to the justice himself.

    The statement from Crow’s office said that that the tuition he and his wife has provided for young people “is given directly to academic institutions, not to students or to their families.”

    “These scholarships and other contributions have always been paid solely from personal funds, sometimes held at and paid through the family business,” the statement said. “It’s disappointing that those with partisan political interests would try to turn helping at-risk youth with tuition assistance into something nefarious or political.”

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  • Mr. ChatGPT goes to Washington: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman set to testify before Congress | CNN Business

    Mr. ChatGPT goes to Washington: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman set to testify before Congress | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is set to testify before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Tuesday after the viral success of ChatGPT, his company’s chatbot tool, renewed an arms race over artificial intelligence and sparked concerns from some lawmakers about the risks posed by the technology.

    “Artificial intelligence urgently needs rules and safeguards to address its immense promise and pitfalls,” said Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who chairs the Senate panel on privacy and technology. “This hearing begins our Subcommittee’s work in overseeing and illuminating AI’s advanced algorithms and powerful technology.”

    He added: “I look forward to working with my colleagues as we explore sensible standards and principles to help us navigate this uncharted territory.”

    A growing list of tech companies have deployed new AI tools in recent months, with the potential to change how we work, shop and interact with each other. But these same tools have also drawn criticism from some of tech’s biggest names for their potential to disrupt millions of jobs, spread misinformation and perpetuate biases.

    Also testifying Tuesday will be Christina Montgomery, IBM’s vice president and chief privacy and trust officer, as well as Gary Marcus, a former New York University professor and a self-described critic of AI “hype.”

    Montgomery is expected to urge Congress to adopt a “precision regulation” approach for AI based on specific use cases, and to suggest that lawmakers push companies to test how their systems handle bias and other concerns – and disclose those results.

    As the CEO of OpenAI, Altman, perhaps more than any other single figure, has come to serve as a face for a new crop of AI products that can generate images and texts in response to user prompts.

    Earlier this month, Altman was one of several tech CEOs to meet with Vice President Kamala Harris and, briefly, President Joe Biden as part of the White House’s efforts to emphasize the importance of ethical and responsible AI development.

    In interviews this year, Altman has presented himself as someone who is mindful of the risks posed by AI and even “a little bit scared” of the technology. He and his company have pledged to move forward responsibly.

    Others want Altman and OpenAI to move more cautiously. Elon Musk, who helped found OpenAI before breaking from the group, joined dozens of tech leaders, professors and researchers in signing a letter calling for artificial intelligence labs like OpenAI to stop the training of the most powerful AI systems for at least six months, citing “profound risks to society and humanity.”

    Altman has said he agreed with parts of the letter. “I think moving with caution and an increasing rigor for safety issues is really important,” Altman said at an event last month. “The letter I don’t think was the optimal way to address it.”

    – CNN’s Jennifer Korn contributed to this report.

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  • Russian-speaking cyber gang claims credit for hack of BBC and British Airways employee data | CNN Business

    Russian-speaking cyber gang claims credit for hack of BBC and British Airways employee data | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    A group of Russian-speaking cyber criminals has claimed credit for a sweeping hack that has compromised employee data at the BBC and British Airways and left US and UK cybersecurity officials scrambling to respond.

    The hackers, known as the CLOP ransomware gang, say they have “information on hundreds of companies.” They’ve given victims until June 14 to discuss a ransom before they start publishing data from companies they claim to have hacked, according to a dark web posting seen by CNN.

    The extortion threat adds urgency to an already high-stakes security incident that has forced responses from tech firms, corporations and government agencies from the US to Canada and the UK.

    The compromise of employee data at the BBC and British Airways came via a breach of a human resources firm, Zellis, that both organizations use.

    “We are aware of a data breach at our third-party supplier, Zellis, and are working closely with them as they urgently investigate the extent of the breach,” a BBC spokesperson told CNN Wednesday. The spokesperson declined to comment on the hackers’ extortion threat.

    A British Airways spokesperson said the company had “notified those colleagues whose personal information has been compromised to provide support and advice.”

    The hackers — a well-known group whose favored malware emerged in 2019 — last week began exploiting a new flaw in a widely used file-transfer software known as MOVEit, appearing to target as many exposed organizations as they could. The opportunistic nature of the hack left a broad swath of organizations vulnerable to extortion.

    Numerous US state government agencies use the MOVEit software, but it’s unclear how many agencies, if any, have been compromised.

    The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has ordered all federal civilian agencies to update the MOVEit software in light of the hack. No federal agencies have been confirmed as victims, a CISA spokesperson told CNN.

    Together with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, CISA also released advice on dealing with the CLOP hack. Progress, the US firm that owns the MoveIT software, has also urged victims to update their software packages and has issued security advice.

    CISA Executive Director for Cybersecurity Eric Goldstein said in a statement: “CISA remains in close contact with Progress Software and our partners at the FBI to understand prevalence within federal agencies and critical infrastructure.”

    But the effort to respond to the cyber attack is very much ongoing.

    The CLOP hackers are “overwhelmed with the number of victims,” according to Charles Carmakal, chief technology officer at Mandiant Consulting, a Google-owned firm that has investigated the hack. “Instead of directly reaching out to victims over email or telephone calls like in prior campaigns, they are asking victims to reach out to them via email,” he said on LinkedIn Tuesday night.

    Allan Liska, a ransomware expert at cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, also told CNN: “Unfortunately, the sensitive nature of the data often stored on MOVEit servers means there will likely be real consequences stemming from the [data theft] but it will be months before we understand the full fallout from this attack.”

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