Government & Policy

Former X policy chief joins Sam Altman’s Tools for Humanity

X’s former top policy chief has taken a job at Tools for Humanity, the company building the tech to support World Network (formerly Worldcoin). Nick Pickles, previously head of global affairs at X, Elon Musk’s social media platform, will serve as chief policy officer for Tools for Humanity, which OpenAI CEO Sam Altman co-founded five […]

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Solar power magnate Gautam Adani and others indicted over alleged $250M bribery scheme

Billionaire Gautam Adani and several executives at his company, the Indian conglomerate Adani Group, have been indicted over an alleged scheme to pay more than $250 million in bribes to Indian officials in exchange for contracts to a 12 gigawatt solar power project. The indictment, unsealed Wednesday in federal court in Brooklyn, charges Adani, his

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Another VC-backed fintech, Earnin, faces crackdown over allegedly ‘predatory’ loans

The attorney general for the District of Columbia is suing instant payday loan fintech Earnin for “deceptively marketing and providing illegal high-interest loans,” the AG alleges. Earnin allows its users to get loans against paychecks. It advertises that users can get $150 a day, up to $750 per pay period, with “no interest, credit check

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DuckDuckGo calls for EU to widen its Digital Markets Act probe of Google

Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo has urged the European Union to widen its Digital Markets Act (DMA) investigation into Google, claiming the search giant is in breach of several areas where the bloc has yet to formally probe the company’s compliance. The EU’s flagship market contestability rulebook has been in force on a handful of tech

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UK crashes out of global top 50 supercomputer ranking

The U.K. no longer has a supercomputer in the top 50, according to new data from the Top500 project, which ranks the 500 most powerful non-distributed computer systems globally. The country’s current national supercomputer system, Archer2, is approaching end-of-life in 2026. According to the latest figures, it’s also now sitting in 62nd place globally, down

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UK open to social media ban for kids as gov’t kicks off feasibility study

The U.K. government is not ruling out further beefing up existing online safety rules by adding an Australian-style ban on social media for under 16s technology secretary, Peter Kyle, has said. Back in the summer the government warned it may toughen laws for tech platforms in the wake of riots that were perceived to have

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UK competition regulator clears Alphabet’s investment in Anthropic

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has okayed Alphabet’s partnership and investment in AI rival Anthropic, concluding that it doesn’t qualify for investigation under current merger regulations. The announcement comes a month after the CMA revealed it was launching a formal “stage 1” probe into Google’s parent’s various investments in Anthropic, a three-year-old San

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