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U.S. senators voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to remove a controversial 10-year ban on states’ abilities to regulate AI from the Trump administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” reports Axios. The provision to the reconciliation bill was introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Many prominent Silicon Valley executives — including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anduril’s Palmer Luckey, and a16z’s Marc Andreessen — were in favor of the so-called “AI moratorium,” which they said would prevent states from forming an unworkable patchwork of regulation that could stifle AI innovation. Opposition to the provision became a bipartisan issue, as most Democrats and many Republicans warned that…
Reuters — Denmark on Tuesday expanded its military service to include women, as the Nordic country seeks to recruit more soldiers and strengthen its defenses amid heightened security concerns across Europe. Under a law passed by Denmark’s parliament in June 2023, Denmark will require women turning 18 after July 1, 2025 to register for assessment days for potential military conscription, aligning with measures already in place for men. Until now, women, who last year made up around 24% of all recruits, had been allowed to join the military on a voluntary basis. “In the world situation we’re in right now,…
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Cousins Tanisha Tucker Lohse and Maria Francisco set off from their desert camp around dawn on most early summer days, in search of ripe fruit from the towering saguaro cactus, an icon of the Southwest that is crucial to the Tohono O’odham Nation’s spirituality.One plucks the small, thorn-covered fruits called “bahidaj” with a 10-foot-long (3-meter-long) stick made with a saguaro rib as the other catches them in a bucket. The harvest ritual is sacred to the O’odham, who have lived for thousands of years in what are now U.S.-Mexico borderlands, and it’s enjoying a renaissance as…
NEW YORK (AP) — The jury in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ sex trafficking trial is set to resume deliberations Wednesday after reaching a yet-to-be-disclosed verdict on all but one of the five charges the hip-hop mogul faces.U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian ordered the jury to continue its closed-door discussions for a third day after the panel of eight men and four women said Tuesday that it was unable to reach consensus on the top count: racketeering conspiracy.The judge agreed with prosecutors and Combs’ defense team that less than 13 hours of deliberations was too soon to give up on reaching a…
An IPO may not be on your near-term roadmap, but the best founders start planning for it long before the bankers show up. At TechCrunch All Stage on July 15 at Boston’s SoWa Power Station, Mo Jomaa, partner at CapitalG (Alphabet’s independent growth fund), will lead a session titled “What to Think About Now If You Want to IPO Someday” on the Scale Stage. In this session, Jomaa will walk founders through what it really takes to build toward a public debut, with lessons drawn from years investing in companies like Databricks, Grafana, Armis, and Cribl. Whether you’re a few…
Kyiv CNN — North Korea is set to triple the number of its troops fighting for Russia along the front lines with Ukraine, sending an additional 25,000 to 30,000 soldiers to assist Moscow, according to an intelligence assessment from Ukrainian officials. The troops may arrive in Russia in the coming months, according to the assessment seen by CNN, adding to the 11,000 sent in November who helped repel Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. Around 4,000 of those North Korean soldiers were killed or injured in the deployment, according to Western officials, yet Pyongyang’s cooperation with Moscow has since bloomed.…
TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 is coming to Moscone West in San Francisco from October 27-29, bringing together 10,000+ startup and VC leaders to chart what’s next in tech. And on October 27, on the premier industry stage Going Public, David George of Andreessen Horowitz will take the mic for a fireside chat focused on one of the most important, and often misunderstood, decisions in a company’s lifecycle: when to go public. What to expect from this fireside chat In this conversation, George will unpack what the next generation of scaled startups needs to know — from the shifting dynamics of IPO…
WhatsApp is adding more AI features to its business suite. The company on Tuesday announced it’s introducing the ability for large businesses to reach customers through voice calls, which will allow the app to explore the use of AI-powered voice agents. The company is also looking into using AI to recommend products to users. WhatsApp Business, which has over 200 million monthly users, has been a notable revenue driver for Meta, as its executives noted in the last few quarterly earnings calls. The company earns money through its click-to-WhatsApp ads and charges merchants for messaging features on the platform. While the…
POTSDAM, Germany (AP) — Generations of Germans believe Frederick the Great brought the beloved potato to Germany.The legend is this: King Frederick II of Prussia wanted his subjects to eat potatoes, introduced to Europe in the 16th century from South America. But the people of Prussia, which later became part of a united Germany, wouldn’t touch the tuber.So the 18th-century monarch resorted to trickery. He placed royal guards and soldiers along the edge of his palace garden — thus creating the illusion that potatoes were a rare and valuable crop reserved for the royal family and its aristocratic friends. But…
Grammarly announced Tuesday the acquisition of email client Superhuman in a push to build out its AI for its productivity suite. Neither companies provided details about the financial terms of the deal. Superhuman was founded by Rahul Vohra, Vivek Sodera, and Conrad Irwin. The company raised more than $114 million in funding from backers including a16z, IVP, and Tiger Global, with its last valuation at $825 million, according to data from venture data analytics firm Traxcn. “With Superhuman, we can deliver that future to millions more professionals while giving our existing users another surface for agent collaboration that simply doesn’t…