Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Ryosei Akazawa speaks during a news conference in Tokyo on Thursday. Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Ryosei Akazawa on Thursday praised the U.S. semiconductor plant project selected for the third round of Japanese funding in the United States under the two countries' tariff agreement. The project "holds great significance for Japan and the United States to work together to secure a competitive advantage in the age of artificial intelligence," Akazawa said during a news conference. In the agreement concluded last year, Japan pledged to provide the United States with $550 billion in investment and loans in exchange for U.S. tariff cuts for imports from the Asian country. Under the project, led by U.S. semiconductor contract manufacturer GlobalFoundries, two new plants are set to be built in the state of New York with funding of up to $21 billion.

Pope Leo says concerns about AI doom scenarios are not'fake news' Pope Leo gives a news conference on his return flight from France on Monday. ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT - Pope Leo on Monday said concerns that artificial intelligence could destroy the world are not "fake news" and should be taken seriously, in an apparent rebuke of U.S. President Donald Trump. The first U.S. pope, who has warned of the dangers of AI throughout his 16-month papacy, also directly criticized technology CEOs who argued there should be no guardrails on the technology. "I do think that the concerns raised by many of the experts, specialists in AI, should be taken seriously," the pontiff said in a news conference on his flight back to Rome after a four-day trip to France. "I don't think that that is fake news, as some have said."

Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. Salvadoran TPS holders, their families and immigrant advocates attend a news conference Thursday in Los Angeles to provide an update on TPS status for Salvadoran immigrants. This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search.

NYC's AI ban through grade 8 sets stage for rest of US, experts say Share NYC's AI ban through grade 8 sets stage for rest of US, experts say on social media New York City's ban on use of artificial intelligence in the classroom for elementary and middle school students in the city's public school system - the largest in the country - could set the stage for how other school systems in the United States tailor their approach to the use of AI, experts say. The moratorium, which was announced on Wednesday, will last for one year and will end the use of 40 different educational tools impacting 600,000 students. The ban will not bar teachers from using the technology to create lesson plans. They need to develop skills alongside their peers, build relationships with educators and wrestle with tough problems on their own," Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a news conference on Wednesday. "The tech industry wants us to believe that AI-powered early education is not only inevitable, but necessary.

Takeda Pharmaceutical is targeting a return on equity of at least 5% over that time, the company's newly appointed Chief Executive Officer Julie Kim said at her first news conference after assuming the top job this week. Takeda Pharmaceutical's newly appointed Chief Executive Officer Julie Kim says the company will return to growth in two to three years as it gears up for a wave of product launches. The company is targeting a return on equity of at least 5% over that time, Kim said at her first news conference after assuming the top job this week. Takeda is planning three major launches, including narcolepsy drug Oveporexton and psoriasis medication Zasocitinib in the next 12 months, while advancing a pipeline of five additional late-stage assets. It will ensure resiliency of its core therapeutic and business areas, which makes up more than half of its revenue. The company is also looking to leverage artificial intelligence, particularly in research and development, where it can accelerate the time it takes to run through pre-clinical work and improve decision making, according to Kim.

Is the fall of Pokrovsk inevitable? Is Trump losing patience with Putin? A Russian missile strike on the eastern Ukrainian city of Balakliia killed three people and wounded 10, including three children, a regional military official in the Kharkiv region said on Telegram on Monday. At least two people were killed and three were injured in Russian shelling of the Nikopol district in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, Vladyslav Haivanenko, the acting head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration, wrote on Facebook. Russian troops captured three villages across three Ukrainian regions, the RIA news agency cited the Russian Ministry of Defence as saying on Monday.

An upstart Japanese political party said Tuesday it will install an artificial intelligence as leader after its maverick founder quit following a disastrous showing in recent elections. The Path to Rebirth party, which was launched in January by Shinji Ishimaru, a former mayor of a small city in western Japan, does not have a policy platform and its members are free to set their own agendas. Ishimaru unexpectedly came second in the 2024 Tokyo gubernatorial election thanks to a successful online campaign but he quit the party after it failed to pick up any seats in this year's upper house elections. The new leader will be AI, Koki Okumura, a doctoral student of AI research who described himself as an assistant to the new leader, told a news conference. Shinji Ishimaru, leader of The Path to Rebirth party, holds a news conference in August in Tokyo.

OutKick writer Mary Katharine Ham and Democratic strategist Kevin Walling join'MediaBuzz' to discuss the election of Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope in history, and the U.S. trade deal with the U.K. Pope Leo XIV wrapped up his first meeting with Vatican-accredited journalists Monday morning. More than 1,000 members of the media were assembled to hear his remarks, according to the New York Times. Some of them even took their children. The gathering took place in the Vatican's Paul VI Hall, Vatican Media reported. There, the pontiff "thanked reporters in Italian for their tireless work over these intense few weeks."

South Korea's data protection watchdog has accused DeepSeek, the Chinese start-up whose artificial intelligence-powered chatbot took the tech scene by storm earlier this year, of transferring personal data without users' consent. The Personal Information Protection Commission said on Thursday that DeepSeek had been transferring information to several companies in China and the United States before its ChatGPT-like AI model was removed from app stores in February, pending a privacy review. Nam Seok, director of the commission's investigation bureau, said during a news conference that the app had sent user prompts and device and network information to a Beijing-based cloud service called Volcano Engine. DeepSeek "acknowledged it had insufficiently considered Korea's data protection laws" and "expressed its willingness to cooperate with the commission, and voluntarily suspended new downloads", Nam said. DeepSeek did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Over the last four years at the United Nations, the international community has witnessed an alarming trend of closer collaboration between Russia and China that poses a significant threat to the "rules-based order" the United States helped design back in 1945. This increased and renewed level of cooperation presents an unprecedented dilemma for the United States and like-minded partners: how to maintain the existing order, warts and all, when two permanent members of the UN Security Council are now working feverishly to subvert it. To many UN observers, China and Russia have now come to the shared conclusion that the UN has become a tool Washington and its allies regularly use to destabilize their regimes and diminish their global influence. Consequently, the United Nations has become a critical battleground in the current era of "Great Power" competition. During my two-plus years as the U.S. ambassador responsible for UN Security Council matters, I have seen first-hand at the UN how these two authoritarian powers repeatedly and energetically spread falsehoods alleging: U.S. Ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament Robert Wood attends a news conference at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, April 19, 2018.