Ramstein Air Base (Germany) (AFP) - Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin promised Tuesday that the United States will not let Ukraine fail, even as further aid remains stalled in Congress and Kyiv's forces face shortages of munitions. The Republican-led House of Representatives has been blocking $60 billion in assistance for Ukraine, and the United States has warned that a recent $300 million package would only last a few weeks. The "United States will not let Ukraine fail", Austin said at the opening of a meeting in Germany of Ukraine's international supporters, at which he is seeking to secure fur...
AFP
San José (United States) (AFP) - Nvidia on Monday announced a major expansion of its collaboration with world-leading BYD and other Chinese electric car makers, including on the development of autonomous AI-boosted vehicles. The move deepens Nvidia's connections with the Chinese EV industry even as it is separately prohibited by the United States from exporting its most powerful AI hardware to China. BYD, which beat Elon Musk's Tesla in sales in the last quarter of 2023, is the latest Chinese auto firm to use Nvidia's DRIVE Thor, an all-in-one vehicle control system that is bolstered by powerf...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump clinched enough support last week to become the standard-bearers for their parties in November's presidential election. Under the US Constitution, each of the 50 states holds its own vote for the next commander-in-chief and candidates are awarded "electors" from each state according to its size. With candidates needing 270 electors to win the White House, elections tend to be decided in the hotly-contested "swing states" with a history of alternating between Republican and Democratic candidates. In the 2024 cycle, those c...
AFP
New York (AFP) - Donald Trump faced having assets seized in a humiliating blow to his carefully cultivated image as a self-made tycoon as his lawyers acknowledged Monday he doesn't have the cash to appeal a $464 million fine for fraudulently inflating his wealth. Trump -- the Republican candidate for November's US presidential election -- intends to challenge the judgment imposed by a New York civil court in February, which would force an automatic stay of enforcement. But first he must put the money into an account managed by the appeals court or post a bond in the full amount, and 30 insuran...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - US President Joe Biden said Monday he had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to send a team to Washington to discuss how to avoid an all-out assault in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. The move is one of the clearest attempts yet by Biden to rein in the key US ally, amid fears that the already huge death toll and humanitarian crisis in Gaza could be drastically worsened by a full attack on Rafah. The White House said separately that Israel had killed one of Hamas's top commanders in a strike in Gaza. "I asked the Prime Minister to send a team to Washington to di...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - US President Joe Biden will hold the first three-way summit with the leaders of the Philippines and Japan next month, the White House said Monday, as the United States boosts alliances against China. Biden's meeting with Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the White House on April 11 is the latest in a series of meeting with Asia-Pacific allies. It also comes against a backdrop of clashes between Philippines and Chinese vessels in the South China Sea, where the countries have contested maritime claims. "The leaders will advance...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - Elon Musk suggested his use of drugs benefits Tesla investors in an interview released Monday, saying he takes prescribed ketamine to treat his "negative frame of mind." The 52-year-old tycoon confirmed he takes the anesthetic -- typically used for pain management and to treat depression -- following reports in the US media that his drug use was spooking investors. “Ketamine is helpful for getting one outside out of a negative frame of mind," Musk told former CNN host Don Lemon in an interview published on social media on Monday. Asked if his ketamine use could impact inves...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - Donald Trump said Sunday he favors a national abortion ban after a certain number of weeks, with exceptions -- but did not confirm how many weeks, leaving his stance on a top US election issue murky. The former president said that he would "soon" issue a proposal on the number of weeks at which a ban should be implemented, as he spoke to "MediaBuzz" on Fox News days after becoming the presumptive Republican nominee for November's White House race. Trump was asked about a New York Times article from February that said he had told advisers he liked the idea of a 16-week nation...
AFP
Port-au-Prince (AFP) - Fourteen bodies were found in an affluent suburb of Haiti's capital Monday, as international efforts accelerated to fill a political vacuum created by weeks of gang violence that has forced the impending departure of the prime minister. Local residents told AFP they did not know the circumstances of the deaths but said that the Laboule and Thomassin neighborhoods, in the suburb of Petion-Ville, had been under attack by what they said were armed criminals since dawn. Witnesses said gang members attacked a bank, a gas station and homes in the area. Gunfire continued to rin...
AFP
San José (United States) (AFP) - Nvidia on Monday unveiled its latest family of chips for powering artificial intelligence, as it seeks to consolidate its position as the major supplier to the AI frenzy. "We need bigger GPUs. So ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce you to a very, very big GPU," said CEO Jensen Huang at a developers conference in California, referring to the graphics processors that are vital in the creation of generative AI. The event, dubbed the "AI Woodstock" by Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, has become a can't-miss date on big tech's calendar due to Nvidia's singular ...
AFP
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