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The U.S. Justice Department has announced the creation of a $1.7bn fund to compensate allies of President Donald Trump who claim they were unfairly investigated by the Biden administration. The "Anti-Weaponization Fund" was unveiled "in exchange" for the president dropping his $10bn lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over the leak of his tax returns, the DOJ said. Democrats said the settlement is a "slush fund" paid out of taxpayer money for Trump and his allies from a federal agency overseen by him. “This is one of the single most corrupt acts in American history,” Donald Sherman, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in a statement. “President Trump, his family, supporters, and countless other America First Patriots were illegally targeted by the Democrat-lead [sic] law enforcement agencies,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said.

 

Time.com

Forbes

Financial Times

Associated Press

BBC News

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is supporting partners who are “actively coordinating the safe withdrawal” of Americans from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where a deadly Ebola outbreak is spreading. About 350 suspected cases and 91 deaths have been reported in the DRC. If American cases emerge, “the whole dynamic is going to shift,” observed Robert Garry, a virologist at Tulane University in New Orleans. The risk to the U.S. public remains low, the CDC said.

 

Bloomberg

CDC Newsroom

Arm Holdings faces an antitrust probe ‌by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over the U.K. chip designer's licensing of its semiconductor technology, part of global scrutiny of the business, with regulators outside the U.S. also looking into the company's practices, including a complaint filed by Qualcomm with the European Commission. The FTC is investigating whether Arm is trying to illegally monopolize ​parts of the semiconductor market, and is ⁠looking to assess whether Arm will reject or downgrade the licensing ​agreements for its chip blueprints used to design central processing units.

 

Bloomberg

Venezuela's government is circulating a draft of regulations as part of its newly enacted oil law. The draft, which sets details on technical, operational, fiscal and control provisions for companies in areas that had been hitherto monopolized by Petróleos de Venezuela SA, abrogates the country's 1943 oil law and 1969 regulations. Miami-based arbitrator and energy specialist Elisabeth Eljuri said clauses cover “novel topics” for the Venezuelan oil sector, including “domestic utilization, unitization, data reversion to the state, greenhouse gas effects, and monitoring to name a few.” She observed in a LinkedIn post: “It seems to suggest that it’s mandatory to implement enhanced recovery and secondary recovery in every project.”

 

Bloomberg

A mediator says Samsung Electronics and its South Korean labor union have narrowed some differences, as the two sides pursue a deal on bonus payments before nearly 48,000 workers walk off the job for 18 days on Thursday. "There ​is some possibility that an agreement could be reached," Park Su-keun, chairman ​of the National Labor Relations Commission, which is mediating the talks, told reporters. "The reality is that all of our citizens are worried about this, considering the ripple effects that a Samsung strike could bring," industry minister Kim Jung-kwan told parliament on Tuesday. Reuters notes that such a strike could hit the semiconductor global supply at a time when the AI boom has already caused shortages.

 

Reuters

Anthropic has agreed to brief leading finance ministries and central banks on vulnerabilities in the global financial system’s cyber defenses identified by the U.S. technology company’s latest AI model.

 

Financial Times

Facebook owner Meta has detailed its layoff plans for this ​week in a memo shared with staff. The company said workforce reductions globally would be accompanied by ‌a fresh round of organizational changes aimed at improving its AI workflows. Meta Chief People Officer Janelle Gale said in the memo that the company ​plans to move 7,000 employees to new initiatives related to AI workflows and to eliminate managerial roles. "Many leaders will announce ​org changes," she said. "As org leaders worked on the changes, many of them incorporated AI native design principles ⁠into their new org structures. We're now at the stage where many orgs can operate with a flatter structure with smaller teams of ​pods/cohorts that can move faster and with more ownership." New initiatives where Gale said staff were being transferred include those aimed at developing ​AI agents that can autonomously carry ​out tasks currently performed by ⁠humans.

 

Reuters

Starbucks plans to open a technology office in India for the company’s fiscal year 2027 as the chain seeks to cut $2bn in costs. The group is seeking to bring some roles back in-house that were being contracted to third-parties to reduce reliance on external service providers. The new office will be the company's first corporate office in India. Bringing the roles back in-house will “build closer connection to the work and the teams delivering it,” a spokesperson for Starbucks said.

 

Bloomberg

Some 3,500 workers on New York's Long Island Rail Road will end their ​strike after a wage deal was reached. New York Governor Kathy Hochul said Monday evening that the deal between unions and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) "delivers raises for workers while protecting riders and taxpayers." Service will resume on Tuesday at noon, she added. Unions have been asking for a wage increase of 5% for the next year of their contract, which begins in June. The MTA had offered a 3% raise with options that could bring it up to 4.5%. Hochul defended the transportation authority and said New York was a "pro-labor state," adding: "We believe in working men and women receiving a fair wage and benefits, but the MTA cannot agree to a contract that would raise fares as much as 8% and risk hiking taxes for Long Islanders." 

 

Reuters

BBC News

The joblessness rate for workers under 35 with a master’s degree has rarely been higher in the past 20 years, according to the Burning Glass Institute, a labor-market think tank. Holders under 35 of a master’s degree are at the 77th percentile of unemployment, where the 50th percentile is normal, according to the analysis. “Every indication is hiring managers now are more receptive than ever to the idea that a person doesn’t need a graduate degree to be competitive,” says Johnny C. Taylor Jr., president of SHRM, a lobbying group for human resource professionals, who adds that AI has been an accelerant for HR people inside large and midsize companies to adopt a skills-first approach to hiring. “We are seeing that, hands down, especially in the last two or three years with AI . . . [Employers simply want to know] Can you do it?”

 

Wall Street Journal

Shakira has been acquitted of tax fraud by Spain’s High Court, which overturned a €55m ($64m) fine imposed by Spanish tax authorities and ordered the government to repay the singer more than €60m, including interest. The court ruled that authorities failed to prove Shakira spent more than 183 days in Spain during 2011, the threshold required to establish tax residency under Spanish law. Spain’s tax agency said it will appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, meaning repayment will be delayed pending the outcome. The ruling relates only to the 2011 tax year and is separate from a 2023 agreement in which Shakira accepted charges and paid a fine over unpaid taxes between 2012 and 2014.

 

Reuters

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said he expects fully self-driving cars without human safety monitors to become more widespread in the United States later this year, and remains optimistic that cars with no humans will be ubiquitous ​within a decade. "Five years from now and certainly 10 years from now . . . probably 90% of all distance driven will be driven by the AI in a self-driving car," he told the Smart Mobility Summit in Tel Aviv. "So overwhelmingly, it'll be quite a niche thing in 10 years to ​actually be driving your own car."

 

Reuters