Microsoft Corp. is cutting around 9,000 jobs, its second major wave of layoffs this year, to control costs and increase spending on artificial intelligence.
The layoffs will affect less than 4% of the company's total workforce, across teams, geographies, and tenure, and aim to streamline processes and reduce management layers.
The job cuts may help offset rising spending on AI infrastructure and reflect a greater push to use AI tools internally, according to an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence.
Europeans still aren't buying Teslas with figures out Wednesday showing sales plunged for a fifth month in a row in May, a blow to investors who had hoped anger toward Elon Musk would have faded by now.
Tesla sales fell 28% last month in 30 European countries even as the overall market for electric vehicles expanded sharply, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. The poor showing comes after Tesla's billionaire CEO had promised a “major rebound” was coming last month, adding to a recent buying frenzy among investors.
They were selling on Wednesday, pushing the prices down more than 4% in early afternoon trading.
IDF officers and soldiers told Haaretz they were ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near food distribution sites in Gaza, even when no threat was present. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, prompting the military prosecution to call for a review into possible war crimes.
Netanyahu, Katz reject claims, call them 'blood libels'
The US supreme court has supported Donald Trump’s attempt to limit lower-court orders that have so far blocked his administration’s ban on birthright citizenship, in a ruling that could strip federal judges of a power they’ve used to obstruct many of Trump’s orders nationwide.
The decision represents a fundamental shift in how US federal courts can constrain presidential power. Previously, any of the country’s more than 1,000 judges in its 94 district courts – the lowest level of federal court, which handles trials and initial rulings – could issue nationwide injunctions that immediately halt government policies across all 50 states.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court held that age verification for explicit sites is constitutional. In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan warned it burdens adults and ignores First Amendment precedent.
Police in Germany have executed more than 170 operations targeting people they referred to as “digital arsonists”.
Starting early on the morning of June 25, officers from the Federal Criminal Police Office raided the homes of people suspected of running “criminal posts” online.
The police move was not the first such in Germany, where it is flagged a “day of action”, targeting alleged authors of “online hate and hate messages”.
"Long ago, rock was a symbol of the anti-establishment...Using words, not guitars, as our weapons today, politics is what rocks!"
That's the marketing message of Sanseito, a new right-wing populist party in Japan known for its stance against immigrants and coronavirus measures as well as calls for rewriting the postwar Constitution, often seen as taboo. Some supporters want to revive wartime slogans of the Japanese Empire.
Sanseito, known in English as the Party of Do it Yourself, was established as the pandemic began in 2020 and quickly exploited the fears and frustrations of people in Japan.
It picked up three seats in last October's lower house election. The party leader Sohei Kamiya, who won re-election in May, has set a target of six seats in voting for the upper house this summer.
Amid growing discontent with economic malaise and record-breaking numbers of inbound tourists, Sanseito supporters complain that foreigners receive better treatment than Japanese and the country's culture is changing rapidly.
The UK government is to purchase 12 new fighter jets which can be equipped with nuclear bombs, and join Nato's airborne nuclear mission.
Downing Street says the move is "the biggest strengthening of the UK's nuclear posture in a generation".
The new F-35A jets can still carry conventional weapons, but have the option of being equipped with US-made nuclear bombs.
The decision will be announced by the prime minister at the Nato summit taking place this week in the Netherlands.
Nato's airborne nuclear mission involves allied aircraft being equipped with American B61 bombs stockpiled in Europe.
New York intends to build a large nuclear-power facility, the first major new U.S. plant undertaken in more than 15 years and a big test of President Trump’s promise to expedite permitting for such projects.
Gov. Kathy Hochul said in an interview that she has directed the state’s public electric utility to add at least 1 gigawatt of new nuclear-power generation to its aging fleet of reactors. A gigawatt is roughly enough to power about a million homes.
President Donald Trump says US forces have conducted “very successful” strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. He also warns against any retaliation, saying: “Remember, there are many targets left.”
Iranian Foreign Minister says the “outrageous” US attacks on Iran’s “peaceful nuclear installations” will have “everlasting consequences”. His comments come as an Iranian missile attack on central and northern Israel wounds at least 23.
It has been over a decade since BYD first began researching and developing the promising new EV battery technology.
Last year, the company reached a milestone by testing its first solid-state battery cells with capacities of 20 Ah and 60 Ah. We knew BYD was planning to launch its first vehicles powered by the new batteries in 2027 after Sun Huajun, the CTO of BYD’s battery business, confirmed the timeline earlier this year.
Meta is announcing its next pair of smart glasses with Oakley. The limited-edition Oakley Meta HSTN (pronounced “how-stuhn”) model costs $499 and is available for preorder starting July 11th. Other Oakley models with Meta’s tech will be available starting at $399 later this summer.
Iranian state television on Tuesday afternoon urged people to remove WhatsApp from their smartphones, alleging without specific evidence that the messaging app gathered user information to send to Israel.
In a statement, WhatsApp said it was “concerned these false reports will be an excuse for our services to be blocked at a time when people need them the most.” WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, meaning a service provider in the middle can’t read a message.
Honda R&D Co., Ltd., a research and development subsidiary of Honda Motor Co., Ltd., today conducted a launch and landing test of an experimental reusable rocket*1 (6.3 m in length, 85 cm in diameter, 900 kg dry weight/1,312 kg wet weight) developed independently by Honda. The test was completed successfully, the first time Honda landed a rocket after reaching an altitude of 300 meters.
This test marked the first launch and landing test conducted by Honda with an aim to demonstrate key technologies essential for rocket reusability, such as flight stability during ascent and descent, as well as landing capability. Through this successful test, Honda achieved its intended rocket behaviors for the launch and landing (reaching an altitude of 271.4 m, and landing at 37cm of the target touchdown point, flight duration 56.6 sec), while obtaining data during the ascent and descent.
President Donald Trump is abruptly leaving the Group of Seven summit, departing a day early Monday as the conflict between Israel and Iran intensifies and the US leader has declared that Tehran should be evacuated “immediately.”
IDF fighter jets struck an occupied command center in the heart of Tehran overnight, eliminating Ali Shadmani, the Chief of Staff and closest confidant of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Shadmani served as the wartime Chief of Staff and commander of the armed forces emergency headquarters. Shadmani commanded both the Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian army.
He was appointed at the beginning of the operation to command Iran's armed forces after his predecessor, Alam Ali Rashid, was eliminated in the opening strike of Operation "Like a Lion". Before his predecessor's elimination, Shadmani served as deputy commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya emergency headquarters and as head of operations division at the armed forces general staff.
Israel unleashed airstrikes across Iran for a third day Sunday and threatened even greater force as some Iranian missiles evaded Israeli air defenses to strike buildings in the heart of the country. Planned talks on Iran’s nuclear program, which could provide an off-ramp, were canceled.
In an indication of how far Israel was prepared to go, a U.S. official told The Associated Press that President Donald Trump in recent days vetoed an Israeli plan to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Israel struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear, missile and military complex early Friday, in an unprecedented attack that reportedly killed two of Iran’s top military commanders and plunges the wider Middle East into dangerous new territory.
The strikes on Iran’s nuclear program and senior military leaders could be a turning point in the long-running conflict, as Israel braced for a major Iranian retaliation – with the threat of a wider regional war breaking out now a real risk.
Moviemaking icon Mel Brooks and Amazon MGM Studios have published a teaser trailer to announce that Spaceballs 2 is moving full steam ahead with plans to premiere in 2027 – and it sounds like Rick Moranis is coming back as Dark Helmet, too.
Like all sponsors of science programs, NASA has had its ups and downs. What makes it unique is that its achievements and failures almost always happen in public.
Triumphs like the moon landings and the deep-space images from the Hubble and Webb space telescopes were great popular successes; the string of exploding rockets in its early days and the shuttle explosions cast lasting shadows over its work.
But the agency may never have had to confront a challenge like the one it faces now: a Trump administration budget plan that would cut funding for NASA’s science programs by nearly 50% and its overall spending by about 24%.
An Air India plane with over 242 passengers onboard crashed near Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad on Thursday.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which was headed to UK, crashed at 1.39 pm while taking off, sending huge billows of smoke emanating near Meghaninagar.
More than 700 Marines based out of the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in California have been mobilized to respond to the protests in Los Angeles, and the troops will join the thousands of National Guard members who were activated by President Donald Trump over the weekend without the consent of California’s governor or LA’s mayor.
The deployment of the full Marine battalion marks a significant escalation in Trump’s use of the military as a show of force against protesters, but it is still unclear what their specific task will be once in LA, sources told CNN. Like the National Guard troops, they are prohibited from conducting law enforcement activity such as making arrests unless Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, which permits the president to use the military to end an insurrection or rebellion of federal power.
Namrata Nangia and her husband have been toying with the idea of having another child since their five-year-old daughter was born.
But it always comes back to one question: 'Can we afford it?'
She lives in Mumbai and works in pharmaceuticals, her husband works at a tyre company. But the costs of having one child are already overwhelming - school fees, the school bus, swimming lessons, even going to the GP is expensive.
It was different when Namrata was growing up. "We just used to go to school, nothing extracurricular, but now you have to send your kid to swimming, you have to send them to drawing, you have to see what else they can do."
An escalating feud between President Trump and Elon Musk June 5 included threats to cancel SpaceX contracts and decommission spacecraft, although those words have yet to become actions.
Pornhub, RedTube and YouPorn have started blocking French users in protest against a new law requiring adult websites to verify the age of their visitors.
Ukraine said on Tuesday that it had hit the bridge connecting Russia and the occupied Crimean Peninsula with explosives planted underwater, in its third attack on the vital supply line for Moscow’s forces since the full-scale war began in 2022.
Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, said on Telegram that its agents had mined the piers of the road and rail Crimean Bridge, also called the Kerch Bridge, and detonated the first explosive at 4.44 a.m. Tuesday. The whole operation took several months, it added.
The agency said it had used 1,100 kilograms of explosives which “severely damaged” the underwater pillars supporting the bridge.
Traffic on the bridge was suspended early Tuesday morning, then again mid-afternoon, before resuming shortly before 6 p.m. local time. Although the scale of the damage was not immediately clear, Tuesday’s attack is the latest example of the SBU’s attempts to blindside Moscow and demonstrate that there are costs to continuing its war.
An operation by Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) using first-person-view (FPV) drones smuggled deep inside Russian and hidden inside trucks has hit 41 Russian heavy bombers at four airfields across the country, a source in the agency told the Kyiv Independent on June 1.
The operation — codenamed "Spider web" and a year-and-a-half in the planning — appears to have dealt a major blow to the aircraft Moscow uses to launch long-range missile attacks on Ukraine's cities.
Europe’s equities have emerged clear winners worldwide as the region’s economic outlook brightens at a time when President Donald Trump’s trade war hobbles US financial markets.
Five months into the year, eight of the world’s 10 best-performing stock markets are in Europe, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That list features Germany’s DAX Index with a rally of more than 30% in dollar terms, as well as peripheral markets such as Slovenia, Poland, Greece and Hungary.
Fake photographs have been around as long as photographs have been around. A widely circulated picture of Abraham Lincoln taken during the presidential campaign of 1860 was subtly altered by the photographer, Mathew Brady, to make the candidate appear more attractive. Brady enlarged Lincoln’s shirt collar, for instance, to hide his bony neck and bulging Adam’s apple.
In a photographic portrait made to memorialize the president after his assassination, the artist Thomas Hicks transposed Lincoln’s head onto a more muscular man’s body to make the fallen president look heroic. (The body Hicks chose, perversely enough, was that of the proslavery zealot John C. Calhoun.)
Tinder is leaning into dating apps’ reputation for superficiality with the launch of a new feature that lets paid subscribers add their height preferences to their profiles.
After a Reddit user posted a photo of the new height setting in the Tinder app, a company spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that the discovery setting has been launched as a global test.
Tinder Gold and Premium subscribers in the test group will have access to the feature, but not free users, we’re told. In addition, the setting will indicate a preference, rather than functioning as a “hard filter,” the company says. That means it won’t actually block or exclude profiles but instead inform recommendations.
The vast majority of President Donald Trump’s global tariffs were deemed illegal and blocked by the US trade court, dealing a major blow to a pillar of his economic agenda.
Elon Musk is leaving his government role as a top adviser to President Donald Trump after spearheading efforts to reduce and overhaul the federal bureaucracy.
His departure, announced Wednesday evening, marks the end of a turbulent chapter that included thousands of layoffs, the evisceration of government agencies and reams of litigation. Despite the upheaval, the billionaire entrepreneur struggled in the unfamiliar environment of Washington, and he accomplished far less than he hoped.
He dramatically reduced his target for cutting spending — from $2 trillion to $1 trillion to $150 billion — and increasingly expressed frustration about resistance to his goals. Sometimes he clashed with other top members of Trump’s administration, who chafed at the newcomer’s efforts to reshape their departments, and he faced fierce political blowback for his efforts.
The southeast of France experienced a second major blackout just 24 hours after the Saturday outage in Cannes, which disrupted the closing ceremony of the renowned Cannes Film Festival. In the early hours of Sunday, Nice became the target of another apparent sabotage, with a fire at a local electrical transformer cutting power to approximately 45,000 homes, according to electricity operator Enedis.
The fire broke out around 2:00 AM at a substation in the Moulins district, west of Nice. The city’s mayor, Christian Estrosi, publicly denounced the incident as a “malicious act.” The outage extended to nearby towns, including Saint-Laurent-du-Var and Cagnes-sur-Mer. Enedis confirmed that power was fully restored by 6:00 AM.
The Trump administration is weighing requiring all foreign students applying to study in the United States to undergo social media vetting — a significant expansion of previous such efforts, according to a cable obtained by POLITICO.
In preparation for such required vetting, the administration is ordering U.S. Embassies and consular sections to pause scheduling new interviews for such student visa applicants, according to the cable, dated Tuesday and signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Germany's foreign minister threatened unspecified measures against Israel on Tuesday and said Berlin would not export weapons used to break humanitarian law, as he and Chancellor Friedrich Merz delivered their most severe rebuke yet over Gaza.
Germany, along with the United States, had long remained in support of Israel's conduct since the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas, even as Israel became increasingly isolated internationally.
Its about-turn comes as the European Union is reviewing its Israel policy and Britain, France and Canada also threatened "concrete actions" over Gaza.
After a pair of Block 2 Ship failures and an extended downtime between flights, SpaceX is set to fly Starship’s ninth flight test and attempt to fly a Ship past second stage engine cutoff. Booster 14 will fly a second time, marking the first reuse of a Super Heavy booster in the Starship program.
Liftoff of Ship 35 and Booster 14 is scheduled for 6:30 PM CDT (23:30 UTC) on Tuesday, May 27, from Orbital Launch Pad A (OLP-A) at SpaceX’s launch facility in Starbase, Texas. SpaceX is targeting the opening of the window for launch, with the window extending to 8:00 PM CDT (01:00 UTC on May 28). Starship will fly on an eastern trajectory out of Starbase.
The police arrived at Maxie Allen’s door at midday on January 29th. None of the six officers seemed to know much about why they were there, recalls Mr Allen.
But they read out a list of charges and searched the house, before arresting him and his partner and taking them to the police station, where they were held for eight hours. The couple’s alleged crime? Disparaging emails and WhatsApp messages about their daughter’s primary school.
Denmark will raise its retirement age to 70 by 2040, the highest in Europe, after a controversial vote in parliament.
The increase in retirement age was approved in the country’s legislature, with 81 votes in favour and 21 against.
The age of retirement has been tied to life expectancy in Denmark – currently 81.7 years – since 2006, with the government raising the threshold every five years.
Under the Danish system, the retirement age will rise from 67 to 68 in 2030, and then 69 in 2035, and finally to 70 in 2040. The retirement age of 70 will only apply to Danes born after Dec 31, 1970.
Several academic and scientific conferences in the United States have been postponed, cancelled or moved elsewhere, as organizers respond to researchers’ growing fears over the country’s immigration crackdown.
Organizers of these meetings say that tougher rules around visas and border control — alongside other policies introduced by US President Donald Trump’s administration — are discouraging international scholars from attending events on US soil. In response, they are moving the conferences to countries such as Canada, in a bid to boost attendance.
The British government is to rollout the use of medication to suppress the sex drive of sex offenders, as part of a package of measures to reduce the risk of reoffending and alleviate the pressures on the prison system, which is running out of space.
In a statement to Parliament Thursday following the release of an independent sentencing review, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said so-called chemical castration would be used in 20 prisons in two regions and that she was considering making it mandatory.
A UK Special Forces officer personally rejected 1,585 resettlement applications from Afghans with credible links to special forces, newly released documents say.
The files, disclosed by the Ministry of Defence in court on Thursday, show the unnamed UKSF officer rejected every application referred to him in the summer of 2023, in what was described as a "sprint".
The MoD told the court that the officer may have been connected to the ongoing inquiry into alleged war crimes committed by the SAS.
The admission comes after the BBC revealed last week that the UKSF officer – who previously served in Afghanistan - rejected applications from Afghans who may have witnessed the alleged crimes.
The Trump administration on Thursday halted Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, taking aim at a crucial funding source for the nation’s oldest and wealthiest college in a major escalation in the administration’s efforts to pressure the elite school to fall in line with the president’s agenda.
Treasury debt continued its wild ride on Wednesday, with yields soaring amid concerns about the U.S. government’s unsustainable deficit spending.
The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond surged as high as 5.1%, its highest level since November 2023, on Wednesday after a surprisingly weak 20-year Treasury note auction. The 10-year Treasury yield, which influences interest rates on all kinds of consumer and commercial loans, climbed to about 4.61%, its highest level since February.
BYD Co. sold more electric vehicles in Europe than Tesla Inc. for the first time, overtaking the American brand that long led the continent’s EV segment.
China’s top automaker registered 7,231 new battery-electric vehicles in April, according to market researcher Jato Dynamics. That was up 169% from a year earlier, vaulting BYD into the top 10 brands by EV sales. Tesla placed one spot back as its registrations plunged 49%.
OpenAI will acquire the AI device startup co-founded by Apple Inc. veteran Jony Ive in a nearly $6.5 billion all-stock deal, joining forces with the legendary designer to make a push into hardware.
The purchase — the largest in OpenAI’s history — will provide the company with a dedicated unit for developing AI-powered devices. Acquiring the secretive startup, named io, also will secure the services of Ive and other former Apple designers who were behind iconic products such as the iPhone.
In February, the United States imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. As a result, Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan has no access to the emails on his Microsoft account. The incident once again demonstrates the risks of dependence on US IT services.
To make matters worse, Khan’s bank accounts have also been frozen, according to the Associated Press. If he takes a flight to the US, he will likely be arrested upon arrival. According to the Associated Press, the ICC has been paralyzed by the forced Microsoft blockade.
The conflict between the ICC and the US arose in November, when the former issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This incident tells bystanders more than just how applicable it is to this specific situation. Anyone who does not want to follow the geopolitical stance of the US exactly must have a plan B when it comes to software.
“Dilbert” creator Scott Adams said on Monday morning that he expects to die soon from prostate cancer, the same disease former President Joe Biden announced he is battling.
Adams made the jarring revelation during the latest episode of “Coffee With Scott Adams,” the Rumble show he hosts during weekday mornings.
“I have the same cancer that Joe Biden has. I also have prostate cancer that has also spread to my bones, but I’ve had it longer than he’s had it – well, longer than he’s admitted having it,” Adams said. “So my life expectancy is maybe this summer. I expect to be checking out from this domain sometime this summer.”
Having shut down its last remaining nuclear plant Saturday, Taiwan is working to secure new imports of natural gas.
The Maanshan nuclear plant closed following the expiration of its 40-year operating license, fulfilling a promise by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party of a “nuclear-free” Taiwan. Analysts say the move will make the country more reliant on imported fossil fuels and more exposed to spikes in the price of gas.
Already Taiwan is struggling to generate enough electricity, leading to recurrent blackouts and brownouts in recent years. To service its booming semiconductor industry, Taiwan will add 5 gigawatts of gas power to the grid this year, the equivalent of five nuclear reactors.
Acting President of Romania Ilie Bolojan has signed a law expanding its armed forces’ powers, allowing troops to shoot down unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that are unlawfully in the country’s airspace.
The law on use of national airspace was initiated after several incidents in which Russian attack drones targeting southern Ukraine’s Odesa Oblast entered Romanian airspace.
The legislation was finally approved by Parliament in February 2025.
Romania’s far-right parties challenged the law in the Constitutional Court but lost the case.
In March, Romania confirmed another case of a Russian drone crashing on its territory, in the border area near the Ukrainian settlement of Reni.
Stakes have never been this high in Romania's post-communist history, as Romanians voted in a crucial and polarised presidential election runoff on Sunday, in which centrist Nicușor Dan faced nationalist George Simion.
Pro-Western independent candidate Nicusor Dan staged a dramatic comeback on Sunday to win the Romanian presidential elections with a firm 54% of the votes.
His contender, hard-right candidate George Simion, with 46% of votes, at first refused to concede in an unprecedented political thriller which transfixed and polarised the country on NATO’s eastern flank, but then relented, congratulating Dan on his victory late on Sunday night.