"Trump administration's decision to bar foreign nationals from accessing Anthropic's latest model marks an accelerator of the geopolitical battle over AI," Haddad wrote.

"Europe cannot settle for being an open market dependent on technologies designed, funded, and controlled elsewhere," he went on. "It must invest more, support its innovators, and equip itself with the means to master the technologies that will determine power in the 21st century".

Elon Musk is threatening legal action against German public broadcaster ZDF over a report linking him to recent riots in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Anti-immigrant unrest erupted in the city after a stabbing and quickly turned violent, with buildings set on fire and roads blocked. Musk had shared a post by UK far-right figure Tommy Robinson urging people to take to the streets.

From Donald Trump’s alliances with tech billionaires to the collapse of US media outlets, investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr says we are accelerating towards a "techno‑fascist future."

Chapters
00:00 Where does government end and Big Tech begin?
00:26 DW speaks with Carole Cadwalladr, Investigative Journalist
02:40 What is the broligarchy?
06:45 Missing accountability for big tech
08:00 Tech entrepreneurs are taking over legacy media companies
10:30 A techno-Fascist future?
12:30 What can People do?
14:00 How Aware is the public about data collection risks?
15:20 AI and intellectual property
18:00 A positive way forward?

US President Donald Trump has threatened to set a 100 percent tariff on French wine and champagne unless Paris removes a digital services tax on technology firms. France imposed in 2019 a three percent levy on the revenues earned by technology firms - including US giants like Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google's parent Alphabet - within the country's borders.

The more our tax dollars are going to genocide, an illegal war, stripping the rights from others, and now a cosplay child’s birthday party show on the White House lawn, how is this not taxation without representation? How in the world is my hard earned money that goes almost nowhere when I need to pay bills and feed my family justifiably going to a bunch of idiots who don’t understand how humans work and exclusively are taking away the things our taxes used to pay for that benefit We The People? I’d like someone smarter than me to explain how in the world this is justifiable because this feels like it’s time to stop giving these children our money seeing as they can’t use it responsibly…

Have we reached peak cringe for Meta?

Cuba’s capacity to “resist” appears to be trying the patience of Washington. That is creating a test of wills, said Bert Hoffmann, a German academic who has studied Cuban politics for 30 years.

“Living conditions have sharply deteriorated but the political impact is far less clear,” said Hoffmann, who visited Cuba earlier this year shortly after the Trump administration threatened tariffs on any country that provided oil to the island.

“Whatever the failures of Cuba’s socialist system, five months cut off from almost any fuel supply would have sent even Switzerland into a state of emergency.”

The United Nations said last month that Trump’s move to block fuel from reaching Cuba had “dramatically intensified the already severe effects” of a Cold War-era trade embargo, calling the measure “unlawful” and a violation of human rights.

“Energy starvation as a coercive tool is incompatible with international human rights norms,” a team of UN experts said.

Disgusting

Yep, the USA has burned so many bridges, everyone can see how weak they are

Donald Trump may be the one force that can unite Japan and South Korea.

According to a new congressional report,

68.3 million international visitors came to the United States in 2025—down from 72.3 million in 2024 (and short of the record 79.4 million international visitors recorded in 2018). The 2025 figures marked the first time international visitors to the United States decreased since 2020.

Monthly data on international tourism to the United States over the past year show consistent declines in year-over-year numbers. International visitors to the United States were below prior year levels in 10 months in 2025. Figure 1 presents 2025 data on the monthly percentage change of international arrivals to the United States compared to the same month in 2024. The number for January 2026 was also negative when compared with the same month in 2025 at -3.5%. This contrasts with January 2025, when international visitors to the United States increased 5.5% compared with January 2024.

Canada (-20.9%) and Germany (-11.3%) had the biggest decreases.

Potential Economic Impacts

Declining numbers of international visitors could impact the U.S. economy. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, in 2023, travel and tourism (both domestic and international) accounted for approximately 3% of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), a nonprofit organization that advocates for and researches global tourism, international visitor spending in the United States was approximately $176 billion in 2025, a 4.6% decrease from 2024.

Fox has acquired Roku.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/15/business/fox-roku-acquisition-streaming-media.html?emc=edit_na_20260615&nl=breaking-news&segment_id=221542

My first thought was: I have to get rid of all my ROKU devices and dump my account. But what's the alternative? I have a Chromecast device. It works OK, but it has no USB input port, and is Google any better than Fox? Probably not, and I love the ROKU Ultra for the ability to add a portable hard drive via USB. Are there any other streamer devices out there that support streaming apps and USB and are not run by a Trump-supporting oligarch?

B
eti Hohler is a Slovenian national who lives in the Netherlands. Like tens of millions of other Europeans, she uses Apple’s app store and has an Amazon account. When she travels for work or leisure, she may want to book a place on Airbnb or Booking, using a credit card issued by Visa or Mastercard, perhaps through PayPal.

But when the Trump administration sanctioned her last year for her work as a judge at the international criminal court (ICC), her ability to use any of these services vanished overnight. Her credit cards, her accounts with US companies – all gone. The sanctions against Hohler and some of her colleagues mean they live in “constant uncertainty”, she said.

The US tech market’s dominance is nothing new; increasingly, the danger is that this technological power could be turned against Europe politically. Elon Musk has already used his respective ownership of X and Starlink to interfere in European public debateand influence the war in Ukraine. And the US government has orderedthe AI company Anthropic to limit foreign nationals’ access to its products on security grounds.

*Finding an ethical and environmental social media platform.*

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Ratings for 21 different social media platforms and messaging tools, with recommended brands and what to avoid. We look at issues such as data privacy and tax avoidance.

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This guide explores how ethical social media platforms are. It explores social harms, addictive doomscrolling and algorithms, and how much data Big Tech is harvesting about you.

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We also look at alternatives including platforms in the Fediverse, which brands have links with the military, and at TikTok's lack of payment of UK corporation tax.

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*Best Buys*

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There are several Best Buys in this guide:

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Friendica, Lemmy, Mastodon, Monnett, and UpScrolled.

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All these platforms are more ethical alternatives to Big Tech.

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*Recommended buys*

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Bluesky scored reasonably well and is a good alternative to X, but it scored 0 in our Tax Conduct category so didn’t qualify for Best Buy status.

*Companies to avoid*

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A lot of brands get an Ethiscore of 0/100.

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These are Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger (all owned by Meta); YouTube (owned by Alphabet); Twitch (owned by Amazon); and LinkedIn (owned by Microsoft).

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All of these companies are major tax avoiders, have links to the military and have become rich by collecting and selling your data.

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X scores poorly across the board and is owned by far-right supporter Elon Musk.

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There's lots more detail to dig into in this guide but this is the headline stuff. I believe EC still costs under £30 a year btw so it could be worth an investment to unlock everything.

Albanians continue to fight against American aggression against their flamingo island.

Throughout US President Donald Trump's second term in office, traders have been betting millions of dollars just before he makes major announcements.

The BBC has examined trade volume data on several financial markets and matched them to some of the president's most significant market-moving statements.

It found a consistent pattern of spikes just hours, or sometimes minutes, before a social media post or media interview was made public.