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Shares in Google parent Alphabet plunged more than seven percent on Wednesday after an Apple executive told a federal court that the search engine’s traffic fell on Apple products last month.Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, testified at an antitrust trial in Washington that Google search volume was losing traffic to AI alternatives such as ChatGPT or Perplexity, according to US media reports.”That has never happened in 20 years,” legal news outlet MLex quoted him as saying.Cue was giving testimony in a trial in which US Judge Amit Mehta will determine how Google must address his landmark ruling last year that it operates an illegal monopoly in online search.The Apple executive’s remarks saw Google’s market capitalization wiped of $140 billion since the close of trading on Wall Street on Tuesday.The marathon court case has revealed that Google pays Apple tens of billions of dollars every year in a revenue sharing agreement in which Google’s search engine is set as the default on Apple’s Safari browser.Markets were also rattled by Cue’s comment that “over the coming year we will add other (AI) choices to the search engine choice in the browser, because I think those products are getting better and better,” he said, according to MLex.The testimony backed Google’s argument that the emergence of AI has begun a new era in how people get information online, with its search engine now facing new rivalry from AI chatbots.US government attorneys have urged Judge Mehta to force Google to sell off its Chrome browser, arguing that artificial intelligence will actually only ramp up the tech giant’s online search dominance.Another option is that the judge, in a decision expected in August, will order an end to the payouts from Google to Apple and others for the default position on devices.Cue told the court this would have a significant impact on Apple’s ability to invest in new products and services.

Mexico will fight to keep its free trade agreement with the United States and Canada in the face of President Donald Trump’s trade war, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Wednesday.”We will defend the USMCA because it has been beneficial for the three countries. If President Trump takes a different approach, we will be prepared for any circumstance, but clearly we want the USMCA to remain,” she said at her morning news conference.The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) replaced the previous NAFTA accord in July 2020, after Trump successfully pushed for a renegotiation during his first term in office.It is due to be reviewed by July next year.Mexico replaced China in 2023 as the largest trading partner with the United States, which buys more than 80 percent of its exports.Sheinbaum has called the USMCA the “only way we can compete with Asian countries, particularly China,” and “one of the best trade agreements in history” — echoing Trump’s previous high praise of the deal.Trump has announced various tariffs targeting Mexico, as well as several policy reversals, as part of his global trade war.While he left Mexico off the list of nations facing his steep “reciprocal tariffs,” its carmakers as well as steel and aluminum exporters still face duties.The preferential treatment given to Mexico and Canada showed the importance of the USMCA, of which Trump “speaks highly,” Sheinbaum said.”The USMCA has been maintained in many areas, with the exception of some issues in the automotive, steel and aluminum sectors, which we are working on,” she added.

Regulators said Wednesday they have been slowing arrivals and departures at one of the United States’ busiest airports following a 90-second traffic control system outage last week that has industry experts sounding alarm bells.Delays and flight cancelations have followed the April 28 incident at Newark Liberty International Airport in the state of New Jersey — one of the three major airports serving the New York metropolitan area.For about a minute and a half, US air traffic controllers stationed in nearby Philadelphia were unable to communicate with Newark planes as the radios and radar went out, according to accounts in US media.Employees involved in the incident have described a terrifying scene, with four air traffic workers taking short-term, trauma-related leave following the incident, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.The episode has heaped additional attention on the US Air Traffic Control system, which has been chronically understaffed and long been beset with older equipment due to shortfalls in congressional funding. In a statement Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration said it was slowing arrivals and departures while taking “immediate steps” to improve reliability at Newark.This includes “accelerating technological and logistical improvements and increasing air traffic controller staffing” at Philadelphia, where Newark’s air space is managed.The agency said it was adding new telecommunications capacity, replacing copper connections with updated materials and deploying backup equipment.It also cited runway construction as cause for the slowdown.US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is set to announce upgrades to the US air traffic control system at a news conference on Thursday. The effort is part of what the Trump administration says will be a “golden age of transportation,” according to a DOT advisory.The troubles at Newark follow a January 29 crash at Reagan National Airport involving a civilian plane and a military helicopter, the first major US commercial crash since 2009. The FAA has experienced staff cuts due to the government reorganization led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. The FAA has said the job cuts do not affect safety employees and that no air traffic control staff has been reduced due to Musk’s initiatives.Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday he called for a full investigation into the problems.”Why have the staffing shortages at Newark and other critical airports been allowed to continue?” Schumer asked. “What role have DOGE cuts played in aggravating the chaos?”

The Walt Disney Company announced plans Wednesday for a new theme park in the United Arab Emirates, highlighting the country’s growing prominence as a global financial and entertainment hub.The waterfront resort will be located on Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island and developed in partnership with local firm Miral. Disney stated that it aims to attract tourists from “the Middle East and Africa, India, Asia, Europe, and beyond.”The announcement comes ahead of US President Donald Trump’s upcoming visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates next week.”Disneyland Abu Dhabi will be authentically Disney and distinctly Emirati,” said Disney CEO Robert Iger in a statement, promising “an oasis of extraordinary Disney entertainment at this crossroads of the world.”The company stated that the new resort will blend Disney’s “iconic stories, characters and attractions with Abu Dhabi’s vibrant culture, stunning shorelines, and breathtaking architecture.”Disneyland Abu Dhabi will be the seventh Disney resort since the original Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California in 1955. Other Disney destinations are located in Florida, Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong and Shanghai.Iger told analysts that the location was chosen to bring the Disney experience closer to hundreds of millions of customers for whom visiting its other six locations “was pretty lengthy in nature and expensive.”He also noted the success of existing attractions in Abu Dhabi, including the Louvre museum and the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim, which is currently under construction.Miral group operates numerous hotels, resorts, and amusement parks in Abu Dhabi including Warner Brothers World, Ferrari World and Sea World.In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Disney Experiences chairman Josh D’Amaro described the new park and resort as the company’s most “modern” and “tech-forward” destination. He added that in an unusual arrangement for Disney, the park would be funded, built, and ultimately operated by the Miral group “with oversight of course from us.””But we’re very confident in this part of the world, with this partner, that this is the appropriate business arrangement,” he added.The new park announcement coincided with Disney reporting a robust increase in quarterly revenues, which sent its shares skyrocketing.The company said overall sales increased seven percent to $23.6 billion in the January to March period. Crucially, subscribers to its Disney+ streaming service grew to 126 million, adding 1.4 million new subscriptions, contrary to analysts’ expectations of a decline. The Experiences segment, which includes theme parks, saw revenue increase to $8.9 billion.

Yemen’s Huthi rebels will continue targeting Israeli ships in the Red Sea, an official told AFP on Wednesday, despite a ceasefire that ended weeks of intense US strikes on the Iran-backed group.A day after the Huthis agreed to stop firing on ships plying the key trade route off their shores, a senior official told AFP that Israel was excluded from the deal.”The waterways are safe for all international ships except Israeli ones,” Abdulmalik Alejri, a member of the Huthi political bureau, told AFP.”Israel is not part of the agreement, it only includes American and other ships,” he said.The Huthis, who have controlled large swathes of Yemen for more than a decade, began firing on Israel-linked shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in November 2023, weeks after the start of the Israel-Hamas war.They broadened their campaign to target ships tied to the United States and Britain after military strikes by the two countries began in January 2024.Alejri said the Huthis would now “only” attack Israeli ships. In the past, vessels visiting Israel, or those with tenuous Israeli links, were in the rebels’ sights.Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei “welcomed the cessation of US aggression against the country” in a statement on Wednesday, praising Yemenis for their “legendary resistance”.The US-Huthi deal was announced after deadly Israeli strikes on Tuesday put Sanaa airport out of action in revenge for a Huthi missile strike on Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport.Sanaa airport director Khaled alShaief told the rebels’ Al-Masirah television Wednesday the Israeli attack had destroyed terminal buildings and caused $500 million in damage.Oman said it had facilitated an agreement between Washington and the rebels that “neither side will target the other… ensuring freedom of navigation”.US President Donald Trump, who will visit Gulf countries next week, trumpeted the deal, saying the Huthis had “capitulated”.”They say they will not be blowing up ships anymore, and that’s… the purpose of what we were doing,” he said during a White House press appearance.- Indirect contacts -The ceasefire followed weeks of stepped-up US strikes aimed at deterring Huthi attacks on shipping. The US attacks left 300 people dead, according to an AFP tally of Huthi figures.The Pentagon said last week that US strikes had hit more than 1,000 targets in Yemen since mid-March in an operation that has been dubbed “Rough Rider”.Alejri said recent US-Iran talks in Muscat “provided an opportunity” for indirect contacts between Sanaa and Washington, leading to the ceasefire.”America was the one who started the aggression against us, and at its beginning, we did not resume our operations on Israel,” he added.”We did not target any American ships or warships until they targeted us.”Scores of Huthi missile and drone attacks have drastically reduced cargo volumes on the Red Sea route, which normally carries about 12 percent of global maritime trade.The Huthis say their campaign — as well as a steady stream of attacks on Israeli territory — is in solidarity with the Palestinians.

The EU is preparing to hit US goods worth nearly 100 billion euros ($113 billion) with tariffs in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s sweeping levies if talks fail, European diplomats told AFP Wednesday.Trump has slapped a series of higher tariffs on Europe since March and in his biggest move, he imposed a 20-percent tariff on a majority of EU goods last month — before announcing a 90-day pause that is due to expire in July.There is currently a “baseline” levy of 10 percent on goods from the 27-country EU and other nations around the world.The European Union hopes to reach a deal with the United States to avoid an all-out trade war, but wants to be prepared to strike back if Trump’s tariffs kick in again.The European Commission, which is in charge of EU trade policy, told member states last week that it would target nearly 100 billion euros worth of US goods in response to the 20-percent tariff if negotiations fail to yield an agreement, two EU diplomats said.The preliminary list of products is expected to be made public on Thursday.EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic told the European Parliament this week that 70 percent of the bloc’s total exports face levies at rates between 10 and 25 percent.He warned that with US trade probes underway into a raft of sectors, from pharmaceuticals to lumber, “around 549 billion euros of EU exports to the US, i.e. 97 percent of the total” could eventually face tariffs.The EU diplomats did not say which US products would be targeted, but the Financial Times newspaper on Wednesday reported Boeing aircraft would be in the firing line.Only a day earlier, France’s Airbus chief executive Guillaume Faury told AFP that Europe should impose tariffs on imports of the US company’s aircraft should talks fail.If negotiations “do not result in a positive outcome, I imagine that there will be — and that’s what we wish — reciprocal tariffs on airplanes to force a higher level of negotiation”, Faury said.The commission and Boeing refused to comment on the FT report.

A US warplane plummeted into the Red Sea when trying to land on the Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, a defense official said Wednesday, the second jet lost from the ship in just over a week.The F/A-18F Super Hornet — which cost about $67 million — went overboard Tuesday due to a failure in the procedure for aircraft to catch a wire with a hook to help them stop after landing.”The arrestment failed, causing the aircraft to go overboard,” the defense official said.”Both aviators safely ejected and were rescued,” the official said, adding that they had minor injuries.It is the second F/A-18 operating off the Truman to be lost in recent days.On April 28, a similar F/A-18E fell off the carrier when the crew that was towing it in the hanger lost control of the plane.One sailor sustained a minor injury in that incident, which also saw a tow tractor lost overboard.Late last year, another F/A-18 operating off the Truman was lost after it was mistakenly shot down by the USS Gettysburg guided missile cruiser. Both pilots survived that incident.And in February, the Truman itself suffered damage when it collided with a merchant vessel in the Mediterranean Sea near Egypt’s Port Said.- Yemen ceasefire -In addition to the lost warplanes and damage, a US official said last week that seven MQ-9 Reaper drones — which cost around $30 million apiece — had been lost in the Yemen area since March 15.The Truman is one of two US aircraft carriers operating in the Middle East, where US forces have been hammering Yemen’s Huthi rebels with strikes since mid-March.The Iran-backed Huthis began attacking merchant vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in late 2023, claiming solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, which has been devastated by the Israeli military following a shock Hamas attack in October of that year.The United States started targeting the Huthis in 2024 under Joe Biden, and President Donald Trump’s administration on March 15 launched a new wave of near-daily strikes.On Tuesday, Trump said that the Huthis had agreed to stop their attacks and that Washington would in turn halt strikes on the rebels, which have left 300 people dead, according to an AFP tally of Huthi figures.”They say they will not be blowing up ships anymore,” the US president said, before mediator Oman said the two sides had agreed a ceasefire.

The US Federal Reserve faces a tough choice Wednesday as it contends with President Donald Trump’s tariff rollout: Prioritize tackling inflation by holding interest rates high, do nothing, or stimulate growth and employment by cutting rates?Analysts and investors overwhelmingly think the Fed will choose to sit tight, preferring to wait and see how the new levies affect the US economy before moving on rates. The rate-setting committee’s second day of deliberations began at 9:00 am local time in Washington (1300 GMT) as scheduled, the Fed said in a statement. Their decision will be published later Wednesday, followed by a press conference held by Fed Chair Jerome Powell. “It’s an unfavorable mix for the Federal Reserve,” Nationwide chief economist Kathy Bostjancic told AFP. “They’re going to see upward price pressures at the same time when economic growth is slowing,” she said. “And then they’ll have to put a weight on what do they believe?”The US central bank has a dual mandate from Congress to act independently to achieve stable prices and maximum sustainable employment, which it does mainly by raising and lowering the level of its key short-term lending rate. Futures traders see a probability of more than 95 percent that the Fed will make no cuts this week, according to data from financial services company CME Group. – ‘Decisive evidence’ – Last month, Trump introduced steep levies on China and lower “baseline” levies of 10 percent on goods from most other countries, sparking weeks of turbulence in the financial markets. The White House also introduced higher tariffs on dozens of other trading partners, and then abruptly paused them until July to give the United States time to renegotiate existing trade arrangements.Data published in recent weeks point to an economic contraction in the first quarter of the year, as consumers and businesses stocked up on imports ahead of the introduction of the new measures.At the same time, the unemployment rate has hovered close to historic lows, and the inflation rate has trended towards — but remained just above — the Fed’s long-term target of two percent. “We continue to think that Fed officials will be willing to ‘look through’ tariff related goods inflation and cut policy rates to support the labor market,” economists at Citi bank wrote in a recent investor note. “But that will not occur until they see decisive evidence in hard data that labor markets are loosening,” they added. Other analysts, including those at Deutsche Bank, expect the Fed will pause for longer to see how the economic picture unfolds. If, as is widely expected, the Fed sits tight this week, its baseline rate will remain at between 4.25 percent and 4.50 percent, where it has sat since December 2024. – ‘Neither good nor bad enough’ -“Incoming data are neither good nor bad enough to force the FOMC to reveal its intentions,” Steve Englander, Standard Chartered bank’s head of North America macro strategy, wrote in a note to clients, referring to the bank’s rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee. Fed Chair Jerome Powell will likely try to make “very little news” during his regular press conference after the rate decision is published, said Bostjancic from Nationwide. Powell will likely face additional questions about the Trump administration’s support for his leadership of the independent central bank, given public criticism leveled at him and the Fed by senior government officials — including the president. “He should lower them,” Trump said of Powell and the interest rates in an interview published over the weekend, repeating his past criticism of the Fed chair while insisting he had no plans to try to fire him before his term ends next year.”By commenting publicly on what the Fed should do, they potentially undermine…the public’s perception of the institution’s commitment to price stability,” former Fed economist Rodney Ramcharan wrote in a note shared with AFP. “If the Fed were to cut rates, markets could perceive that decision as ‘political’ rather than a reaction to actual economic conditions,” he added. 

Sara, a Dubai-based journalist, joined the US-funded Alhurra TV news channel hoping for job security. But after it abruptly stopped broadcasting and fired most staff, she’s wondering how to make ends meet.Alhurra, the only Arabic-language US station in a region where anti-American feeling is common, went off-air last month, hit by widespread cuts under President Donald Trump.The station, which has struggled to compete in a crowded market that includes Qatar’s Al Jazeera, had already sacked 25 percent of its workforce after budget cuts last September.It is also out of kilter with Trump, a frequent critic of traditional media who will visit the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf monarchies this month.But Alhurra’s sudden closure came as a shock. On April 12, all 99 employees in Dubai, its Middle East headquarters, received an email titled “Thank you for your service”, informing them of their immediate dismissal.Sara, who asked to use a pseudonym to speak freely about the situation, said they are now fighting for the end-of-service payments mandated by law in the UAE.”We’re living a horror movie,” she told AFP. “My income was suddenly cut off, and I have family commitments and a bank loan. What will happen if I can’t pay the instalments?”The defunding of Alhurra, along with other outlets under the federal US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) such as Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, is being challenged in US courts.But the Dubai staff hold out little hope of being reinstated. Meanwhile, the stress has “driven us into psychological ruin”, said Sara, who is in her thirties.- ‘Dialogue between leaders’ -Dubai’s authorities are closely monitoring the case and providing assistance, including by relaxing the usual practice of quickly cancelling residence permits for those without a job, Alhurra journalists told AFP.According to Mutlaq al-Mutairi, a media specialist at Saudi Arabia’s King Saud University, the cuts were in line with shifts in messaging under Trump.The United States no longer uses media as “they used to do in the past to communicate their political vision, especially on the question of terrorism”, Mutairi said.Instead, Trump now directly “relies on dialogue between leaders and governments” to get his message across, he told AFP.Washington established Alhurra in 2004, the year after the invasion of Iraq, as a soft power tool to counterbalance the influence of Al Jazeera, which had been broadcasting since 1996.The US news channel claims a weekly audience of more than 30 million people in 22 Arab countries.It is the flagship of Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), part of USAGM — an independent federal agency that funds media outlets.However, the Trump administration — which placed USAGM under the leadership of Kari Lake, an ultra-conservative former TV news anchor — condemned it as a “corrupt giant and a burden on American taxpayers”.USAGM had 3,384 employees in fiscal year 2023 and had requested $950 million in funding for the current fiscal year. – ‘Kill strategy’ -Jeffrey Gedmin, MBN’s president and CEO for just over a year, said the company had gone from around 500 employees to “about 40″.”The Trump administration, in my view, is not particularly fond of this kind of independent media,” he told AFP, describing the cuts as a “kill strategy”.”I think what the Trump administration is doing is simply unwise. I think it’s going to harm, reputationally, the United States of America.”Given the recent job losses, many of Alhurra’s staff were not surprised it closed. But they were taken aback by the speed of events.”The decision (to close) was expected, but we didn’t imagine it would happen so quickly,” said an employee at MBN’s Virginia headquarters.”They threw us out into the street,” the employee added.Michael Robbins, director of the Arab Barometer research network, pointed to Alhurra’s limited success competing with Al Jazeera, as well as the BBC, which “already provided news in Arabic from a Western perspective and had a much longer reputation”. “Few in the region turn to Alhurra as their primary source of information,” he added.Another Alhurra journalist in Dubai, who also did not want to be named, said he was facing an “uncertain professional future” after eight years at the channel. “We are shunned (by media) in most Arab countries because we worked for the Americans,” said the 56-year-old. Gedmin said he was “in complete solidarity” with the laid-off employees. “We’re fighting to see if we can help them at least somewhat,” he said.

Hollywood has always been “an international industry,” that would suffer creatively if cross-border work was curbed, the head of North America’s largest film festival told AFP.Cameron Bailey, chief executive of the Toronto International Film Festival, joined other entertainment industry leaders in criticizing President Donald Trump’s proposed 100 percent tariffs on foreign films, a surprise weekend announcement that plunged the movie industry into uncertainty. “Hollywood itself has always been, since the very early days, an international industry,” Bailey said in an interview at TIFF’s flagship Toronto venue, a complex that includes cinemas, bars and other social spaces. He recalled the US film industry’s “classic era” in the 1940s and 1950s, created by filmmakers who had come from Europe.Bailey said the history of movie-making has proven the value of letting “story-telling brilliance to really flow across borders.””Like any global industry, when you draw on the very best talent from around the world, you’re always going to do better,” Bailey said. Writing on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, Trump said he had authorized his administration to begin “instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.””WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!” he wrote.A survey of studio executives revealed that their top five preferred production locations for 2025 and 2026 were all outside of the United States, due to competitive tax incentive schemes on offer. Toronto was first on the list and Vancouver, in western Canada, ranked third. Trump has imposed tariffs on a range of Canadian goods including autos, steel and aluminum but his plans for the film industry remain unclear. Bailey said if Trump moved forward, any actions to limit film production in Canada would likely lead to less talent feeding into Hollywood. “Our actors become their movie stars sometimes,” Bailey said.”Our producers and screenwriters and directors and crews are all working to support Hollywood’s movies, shows, series, and that’s been going on for a long time.”- ‘No sticky floors’ -As cinemas face fresh challenges to attract customers amid the growth of streaming services, Bailey said future success for theaters will rely on their ability to offer an elevated social experience. TIFF’s downtown Toronto venue, The Lightbox, includes a cocktail lounge and various other areas for social interactions to complement watching a film. “Nothing wrong with watching something at home on the couch, that’s always nice as well, but we believe in the theatrical experience,” Bailey said. “You’ll see more and more movie theaters offer those kind of premium experiences, serving meals, serving wine, offering people places to hang out after the movie to talk,” he added.The “technical experience,” including picture quality and sound, also need to be elite, Bailey said. “No sticky floors, obviously, it has to feel like it’s something special when you go out.”- Talent poaching? -Canadian universities, hospitals and other institutions are making targeted efforts to attract top US talent, trying to recruit disgruntled researchers who are facing political and financial pressure under Trump, including with threats of massive federal funding cuts.Bailey told AFP he does not see the need for Canada’s film industry to be “actively recruiting” US artists, but affirmed Canada should remain “a haven” for those uncomfortable with political circumstances in other countries, including the United States.  “Canada has a not-too-distant history of welcoming people who didn’t want to take part in the Vietnam War as Americans, and they came to Canada, and they were a significant part of building the culture in the 60s and 70s in this country,” he said.The 50th edition of TIFF opens in September.