Artificial Intelligence is now being used to personalize eSIMS, potentially saving hundreds of dollars for travelers overseas. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced a new rule that will help protect travelers from all those unwanted add-on fees. The rule tackles "Unfair or Deceptive Fees." These are sometimes applied to short-term lodging as "resort" or "destination" fees when customers use hotel amenities such as pools or gyms. Short-term lodging includes hotels, motels, vacation rentals and businesses like Airbnb.

A swath of US technology firms announced deals in the Middle East as Donald Trump trumpeted 600bn in commitments from Saudi Arabia to American artificial intelligence companies during a tour of Gulf states. Among the biggest deals was a set signed by Nvidia. The company will sell hundreds of thousands of AI chips in Saudi Arabia, with a first tranche of 18,000 of its newest "Blackwell" chips going to Humain, Saudi Arabia's sovereign-wealth-fund-owned AI startup, Reuters reported. Cisco on Tuesday said it had signed a deal with G42, the AI firm based in the United Arab Emirates, to help the company develop that country's AI sector. Trump plans to visit the UAE on Thursday.

Digital scammers have never been so successful. Last year Americans lost 16.6 billion to online crimes, with almost 200,000 people reporting scams like phishing and spoofing to the FBI. More than 470 million was stolen in scams that started with a text message last year, according to the Federal Trade Commission. And as the biggest mobile operating system maker in the world, Google has been scrambling to do something, building out tools to warn consumers about potential scams. Ahead of Google's Android 16 launch next week, the company said on Tuesday that it is expanding its recently launched AI flagging feature for the Google Messages app, known as Scam Detection, to provide alerts on potentially nefarious messages like possible crypto scams, financial impersonation, gift card and prize scams, technical support scams, and more.

After publishing my third book in early April, I kept encountering headlines that made me feel like the protagonist of some Black Mirror episode. "Vauhini Vara consulted ChatGPT to help craft her new book'Searches,'" one of them read. "To tell her own story, this acclaimed novelist turned to ChatGPT," said another. "Vauhini Vara examines selfhood with assistance from ChatGPT," went a third. The publications describing Searches this way were reputable and fact-based.

Tech expert Kurt Knutsson discusses how robots can milk, feed and clean cows on dairy farms, boosting efficiency and comfort. A threat to American livestock – the New World Screwworm (NWS) fly, which has been considered eradicated from the country since 1966 -- has reemerged as a potential danger following an outbreak in Mexico. The news triggered a shutdown of cattle, horse and bison imports along the southern border, as U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins announced in an X post on Sunday. "Due to the threat of New World Screwworm I am announcing the suspension of live cattle, horse, & bison imports through U.S. southern border ports of entry effective immediately," she wrote in the post. "The last time this devastating pest invaded America, it took 30 years for our cattle industry to recover.

The United States has reportedly been investigating reports that Nvidia GPUs have landed illegally in China to be used by Chinese LLMs like DeepSeek, and one US lawmaker will be introducing a new bill that aims to track the locations of AI chips--like the ones made by Nvidia--after they're sold, reports Reuters and Neowin. The smuggling of CPUs and GPUs is nothing new. PC components have often been smuggled across the ocean to countries like China and other East Asian countries for years. But with the rising power of AI and the implications of AI on technological prowess, it's not unusual that the US government wouldn't want that tech falling into rival hands. The proposed legislation would oblige US authorities to develop regulations for location verification of AI chips.

Sometimes it helps me to write by thinking about how a radio broadcaster or television presenter would deliver the information, so I'm your host, Blake Montgomery. Today in tech news: questions hover over the automation of labor in the worker-strapped US healthcare system; and drones proliferate in a new conflict: India v Pakistan, both armed with nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, in contrast to a thoughtful and robust conversation, the US is taking the opposite tack. Legend has it that Alexander the Great was presented with a knot in a rope tying a cart to a stake. So complex were its twistings that no man had been able to untie it of the hundreds who had tried. Alexander silently drew his sword and sliced the knot in two.

In the largest gathering of 2026 gubernatorial candidates to date, seven Democrats vying to lead California courted labor leaders on Monday, vowing to support pro-union agreements on housing and infrastructure projects, regulation of artificial intelligence, and government funding for university research. Throughout most of the hourlong event, the hundreds of union members inside the Sacramento hotel ballroom embraced the pro-labor pledges and speeches that dominated the candidates' remarks, though some boos rose from the crowd when former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa strayed from the other Democrats on stage. Villaraigosa was the only candidate to raise objections when asked if he would support providing state unemployment benefits to striking workers, saying it would depend on the nature and length of the labor action. Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023 vetoed a bill that would have provided that coverage, saying it would make the state's unemployment trust fund "vulnerable to insolvency." The Monday night event was part of a legislative conference held by the California Federation of Labor Unions and the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, two of the most influential labor organizations in the state capital.

With the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump pursuing its "America First" policy, Japan needs to produce its own artificial intelligence technology for defense purposes as cutting-edge AI could become a tool for political leverage, the CEO of a much-hyped Japanese AI startup said Tuesday. Speaking at a news conference in Tokyo, Sakana AI CEO David Ha said that as U.S. foreign policy becomes more U.S.-centric, AI services could serve as "a bargaining chip for countries." "Especially in defense and cybersecurity, AI is becoming a core part of this technology. So Japan should have its own know-how and capabilities to produce the AI systems it needs to run them," said Ha, who founded Sakana AI in 2023 and has raised some 30 billion ( 203 million) from investors including Nvidia.

On May 4, Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launched a barrage of suicide drones at Port Sudan, the army's de facto wartime capital on the Red Sea. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) accused foreign actors of supporting the RSF's attacks and even threatened to sever ties with one of its biggest trading partners. The RSF surprised many with the strikes. It had used drones before, but never hit targets as far away as Port Sudan, which used to be a haven, until last week. "The strikes … led to a huge displacement from the city. Many people left Port Sudan," Aza Aera, a local relief worker, told Al Jazeera.