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Trump reveals millions of dollars' worth of share deals in big tech and AI

BBC News

Trump reveals millions of dollars' worth of share deals in big tech and AI US President Donald Trump has disclosed millions of dollars' worth of stock market trades made during July, including in firms from Elon Musk's SpaceX to tech and AI giants such as Microsoft. According to official documents, between $6.5m (£4.8m) and $31m worth of stock in Microsoft was sold on behalf of Trump, while they show purchases of between $165,000 and $400,000. Across more than 1,000 trades, shares were bought and sold in AI company Nvidia and software firm Palantir, a contractor with the US defence department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the filing shows. A White House spokesperson said Trump's stock and bond portfolio is independently managed by third parties. The spokesperson told the BBC: Neither President Trump nor any member of his family has any ability to direct, influence or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold.


China's drive for AI self-sufficiency rewarding firms with global focus

The Japan Times

A campaign for Chinese self-sufficiency in artificial intelligence technology has led to intense local competition and a vicious price war, while export-oriented companies have thrived on surging global demand for infrastructure such as data centers. China's push for global supremacy in artificial intelligence technology is increasingly benefiting companies that supply the rest of the world, with investors favoring such stocks as fierce competition hurts their domestically focused peers. A Bloomberg gauge tracking 30 Chinese technology stocks with the biggest overseas revenue exposure has delivered a return of 36% this year, versus 9% for those more dependent on local sales. A separate measure of the export-oriented firms' outperformance over the other group is set for the strongest-ever reading this year. The contrasting fortunes partly result from Beijing's ambition to build its own AI ecosystem.


Roundtables: The Deadly Failures of The Virtual Border Wall

MIT Technology Review

The US has spent billions building a "virtual wall" of surveillance towers along its southern border over the past 25 years, promising they will help detect and apprehend border crossers and save lives. Some were even under the watch of newly installed AI-powered towers designed to spot people automatically. Our findings reveal a humanitarian crisis more visible than previously known, and repeated failures of the virtual wall's basic security promise. Join MIT Technology Review editors and reporters for a conversation examining the failures of border surveillance technology and uncovering the stories of the people who die in the borderlands. The US spent billions on border surveillance. Why can't it catch people before they die?


Fake and divisive ads proliferate in Israel's first AI election

The Japan Times

Fake and divisive ads proliferate in Israel's first AI election Artificial intelligence-crafted distortions are saturating the Israeli information environment just weeks before the country's most consequential elections in decades. In a recent video widely circulated online, Israel's top justices and its attorney general are seen being dragged by security guards from a chaotic anti-government protest that never took place. The 33 seconds of emotionally-charged footage was originally posted by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a fierce opponent of the judiciary, and triggered an immediate backlash. Critics said it incited violence, while supporters said it was justified because they accuse the leaders of Israel's legal system of a left-wing plot to stymie the government's policies. But the depicted scenes are fake -- no such protest took place and the video carries a tell-tale watermark to identify content made using artificial intelligence.


How thousands of migrants stranded in Ceuta are surviving

Al Jazeera

Authorities estimate that at least 10,000 people remain in the enclave of Ceuta after a record surge of 72,000 migrants crossed from Morocco to Ceuta over the course of two days in late July, overwhelming local resources and creating a humanitarian crisis. UN Chief Guterres calls for ban on'killer robots' 'Licence to kill:' French protests decry police use-of-force bill Airplane makes'miracle' landing as Typhoon Dujuan hits Japan


How we made the first comprehensive map of deaths along the US border's "virtual wall"

MIT Technology Review

How we made the first comprehensive map of deaths along the US border's "virtual wall" We analyzed whether nearly 4,000 migrant deaths occurred within sight of the US government's surveillance towers. Our investigation found people dying near border surveillance towers that promised faster responses to crossings. Our 15-month investigation into death and surveillance along the US-Mexico border began with a simple question: Why did so many people die near government surveillance towers meant to help track and apprehend them? This story is part of Dying on Camera, a collaboration between and . To answer that question, we looked through thousands of pages of government documents, visited the border multiple times, and interviewed more than 45 people, including current and former White House advisors, presidential appointees, Border Patrol agents, medical examiners, sheriffs, humanitarian volunteers, and employees of tech companies. The result of our investigation is the first comprehensive map and analysis of deaths near border surveillance towers. Here's how we built it, what decisions we made along the way, and what the data can and can't tell us. The investigation relied on knowing where migrants have died and where and when US Customs and Border Protection towers were installed.


The US spent billions on border surveillance. Why can't it catch people before they die?

MIT Technology Review

The US spent billions on border surveillance. Why can't it catch people before they die? Surveillance towers, increasingly powered by AI, promised faster responses to crossings. Our investigation of deaths near the towers found they are failing to deliver. When José Morales Bernal crossed the border into the United States on April 8, 2024, the day before his 32nd birthday, it should have triggered a chain of technological alerts and human responses. As he walked through the desert in southern New Mexico that morning, he was within range of three surveillance towers. Newly installed by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), they were built by the defense tech company Anduril and equipped with cameras and AI to automatically detect and track people. They transmit live video to nearby control rooms and can send alerts to the government-issued smartphones held by agents in the area, prompting the closest available to respond. This story is part of Dying on Camera, a collaboration between and . These AI-enabled towers are meant to give greater visibility across the 1,951-mile southern border, freeing up border agents from having to spend hours staring into video monitors. They were installed in this particular place to spot border crossers before they reached the nearby town of Sunland Park. If the system worked as intended, Morales should have been apprehended. If he needed medical help, agents were trained to provide it. Despite the nearby surveillance towers, it was employees of the local landfill, rather than Border Patrol, who first spotted Morales that morning. At 1 p.m. the workers saw him again, now lying in the sand. At 4 p.m. the landfill workers saw that he had not moved and called Border Patrol. Agents arrived 45 minutes later. When an agent then called 911 to report the body, he said it was "probably one of the migrants crossing through there," seemingly unaware that Morales had been moving near the agency's surveillance systems earlier that day. Morales had died just 360 feet from the closest surveillance tower.


She died at the San Diego border. A surveillance camera was in plain sight

MIT Technology Review

She died at the San Diego border. In Southern California's Otay Mountain Wilderness, the federal surveillance network seems unavoidable. But year after year, migrant deaths persist. A year ago, she crossed the border from Tijuana, and soon sent her family a final set of messages. She had only walked for a couple of hours, and already she was lost. It was early afternoon on Sept. 14, 2025, when 30-year-old Graciela Gómez Hernández crossed the border from the eastern edge of Tijuana into Southern California, sending voice messages to her mother and sister as she walked. This story is part of Dying on Camera, a collaboration between and . Gómez Hernández did not tell her family about her plan until the day before. Once she arrived in California, she hoped to work and send money back to her three children and her parents in southern Mexico. Her oldest son, age 11, had asked for a bicycle.


4 ways to address the failures we found along the US border's "virtual wall"

MIT Technology Review

The US has spent billions on surveillance towers, but hundreds of people have died near them. Here's how to strengthen federal oversight. We found cases of people who walked undetected through areas surveilled by advanced, AI-enabled towers and later died nearby, where their bodies remained unnoticed for weeks or months. These cases reflect systemic flaws in the virtual wall: broken towers, algorithms that failed to detect people, and agents who simply did not respond to alerts. This story is part of Dying on Camera, a collaboration between and . Each of these deaths should have raised alarms inside US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) about the flaws in the agency's surveillance network.


Drone owners rush to offload devices ahead of Beijing ban

The Japan Times

People walk past a sign reading No drone zone in an alley in Beijing on Sept. 14. | AFP-JIJI Beijing - Drone owners in Beijing flocked to designated buy-back sites in recent days, looking to sell their devices for as much as possible ahead of an impending citywide ban. New rules in the Chinese capital ban not just the flying of unmanned aerial vehicles but the possession or storage of them, meaning owners have until November 15 to get rid of their drones. At several authorized buyer sites across the city, reporters witnessed queues of people waiting for staff to appraise their drones and negotiate prices. All sites had a visible police presence, indicating the sensitivity of the new laws, and most people there did not want to talk to reporters. At the flagship store for the world's largest drone-maker DJI in Beijing's business district, around a dozen people queued on Thursday morning hoping to sell their drones back for a reasonable price.