Explainer-What is USAID and why has it become a target for Trump and Musk?

By David Brunnstrom WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is considering merging the U.S. international aid agency (USAID) into the State Department in a major revamp that would shrink its workforce and align its spending with Trump’s “America First” policy. Trump has entrusted Elon Musk, the billionaire heading his drive to shrink the…

Read More

Trump to meet with Nvidia CEO on Friday, White House official says

By Jarrett Renshaw and Karen Freifeld WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang at the White House on Friday, a White House official said, following reports the Trump administration is studying new ways to restrict AI chip sales to China. Details about the meeting were not immediately available….

Read More

Why blocking China’s DeepSeek from using US AI may be difficult

By Stephen Nellis, Krystal Hu, Jeffrey Dastin, Anna Tong and Katie Paul (Reuters) – Top White House advisers this week expressed alarm that China’s DeepSeek may have benefited from a method that allegedly piggybacks off the advances of U.S. rivals called “distillation.” The technique, which involves one AI system learning from another AI system, may…

Read More

House Republicans fail to clinch deal on tax cuts, despite Trump’s urging

By David Morgan MIAMI (Reuters) – A three-day meeting of U.S. House Republicans, meant to jumpstart President Donald Trump’s $4 trillion tax cut agenda, ended on Wednesday without a deal as party fiscal hawks refused to move ahead unless the plan reduced the $1.8 trillion federal deficit. House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson called the…

Read More

Trump fires officials who worked for prosecutor Jack Smith, Fox News reports

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Justice Department is firing more than a dozen officials who worked on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s cases against President Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, Fox News reported on Monday. The officials were fired after Acting Attorney General James McHenry said…

Read More

Big Tech faces heat as China’s DeepSeek sows doubts on billion-dollar spending

By Aditya Soni and Zaheer Kachwala (Reuters) – Chinese startup DeepSeek’s cheaper AI is sharpening investor scrutiny of the billions U.S. tech giants are pouring to develop the technology and analysts say it will dominate this week’s much-awaited results from industry bellwethers. DeepSeek has claimed it took just two months and cost under $6 million…

Read More

US judge pauses SpaceX’s challenge to case over anti-immigrant bias

By Daniel Wiessner (Reuters) – A federal judge on Friday granted the U.S. Department of Justice’s request to pause a lawsuit by Elon Musk’s SpaceX claiming the agency lacks the power to pursue claims that the space technology company refused to hire certain immigrants. U.S. Magistrate Judge Ignacio Torteya in Brownsville, Texas, made the decision…

Read More

Purdue Pharma, Sacklers reach $7.4 billion national opioid settlement

By Dietrich Knauth NEW YORK (Reuters) -Purdue Pharma and its Sackler family owners have reached a new $7.4 billion settlement to resolve thousands of lawsuits alleging that the pain medication OxyContin caused a widespread opioid addiction crisis in the U.S., several state attorneys general said Thursday. The settlement was announced nearly seven months after the…

Read More