AFP USA

Billionaire Elon Musk sparked fevered speculation when he turned up with a black eye for his Oval Office farewell with US President Donald Trump on Friday.But the South African-born tech magnate said he had a simple explanation: his son had punched him in the face.”I was just horsing around with lil’ X, and I said, ‘go ahead punch me in the face,'” 53-year-old Musk told reporters when asked how he got the shiner.”And he did. Turns out even a five-year-old punching you in the face actually is…” he added, before tailing off.”I didn’t really feel much at the time but I guess it bruises up.”Trump hosted the press conference with Musk to mark the Tesla boss’s last day at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk had expressed increasing disillusionment with the job but said he would remain a “friend and advisor.”Musk’s appearance was overshadowed by allegations in the New York Times that he had engaged in heavy drug use while on the campaign trail for Trump in 2024.Trump said he “didn’t notice” the purple bruise next to Musk’s right eye, but added: “X could do it, if you knew X.”Musk’s son X — full name X Æ A-Xii — made frequent appearances in the White House when his father was running DOGE’s cost-cutting rampage through the federal government.He even sat on Musk’s shoulders during the SpaceX magnate’s first Oval appearance back in February, and was seen picking his nose next to Trump’s “Resolute” Desk.Musk took the chance to joke at French President Emmanuel Macron’s expense when it came to his black eye.After Trump was asked for his reaction to a video of Macron’s wife apparently shoving the French leader’s face, Musk laughed and said: “I’ve got a little shiner here.”Musk, wearing a DOGE baseball cap and a T-shirt saying “The Dogefather,” joked about it again when he was asked how he got the injury.”I wasn’t anywhere near France,” he said.

Google on Friday urged a US judge to reject the notion of making it spin off its Chrome browser to weaken its dominance in online search.Rival attorneys made their final arguments before US District Court Judge Amit Mehta, who is considering “remedies” to impose after making a landmark decision last year that Google maintained an illegal monopoly in search.US government attorneys have called on Mehta to order Google divest itself of Chrome browser, contending that artificial intelligence is poised to ramp up the tech giant’s dominance as the go-to window into the internet.They also want Google barred from agreements with partners such as Apple and Samsung to distribute its search tools, which was the focus of the suit against the Silicon Valley internet giant.Three weeks of testimony ended early in May, with Friday devoted to rival sides parsing points of law and making their arguments before Mehta in a courtroom in Washington.John Schmidtlein, an attorney for Google, told Mehta that there was no evidence presented showing people would have opted for a different search engine if no exclusivity deals had been in place.Schmidtlein noted that Verizon installed Chrome on smartphones even though the US telecom titan owned Yahoo! search engine and was not bound by a contract with Google.Of the 100 or so witnesses heard at trial, not one said “if I had more flexibility, I would have installed Bing” search engine from Microsoft, the Google attorney told the judge.- ‘More flexibility’ -Department of Justice (DoJ) attorney David Dahlquist countered that Apple, which was paid billions of dollars to make Chrome the default browser on iPhones, “repeatedly asked for more flexibility” but was denied by Google.Google contends that the United States has gone way beyond the scope of the suit by recommending a spinoff of Chrome, and holding open the option to force a sale of its Android mobile operating system.”Forcing the sale of Chrome or banning default agreements wouldn’t foster competition,” said Cato Institute senior fellow in technology policy Jennifer Huddleston.”It would hobble innovation, hurt smaller players, and leave users with worse products.”The potential of Chrome being weakened or spun off comes as rivals such as Microsoft, ChatGPT and Perplexity put generative artificial intelligence (AI) to work fetching information from the internet in response to user queries.The online search antitrust suit was filed against Google some five years ago, before ChatGPT made its debut, triggering AI fervor.Google is among the tech companies investing heavily to be a leader in AI, and is weaving the technology into search and other online offerings.- Kneecap Google? -Testimony at trial included Apple vice president of services Eddy Cue revealing that Google’s search traffic on Apple devices declined in April for the first time in over two decades.Cue testified that Google was losing ground to AI alternatives like ChatGPT and Perplexity.Mehta pressed rival attorneys regarding the potential for Google to share data as proposed by the DoJ in its recommended remedies.”We’re not looking to kneecap Google,” DoJ attorney Adam Severt told the judge.”But, we are looking to make sure someone can compete with Google.”Schmidtlein contended that the data Google is being asked to share contains much more than just information about people’s online searches, saying it would be tantamount to handing over the fruit of investments made over the course of decades.”There are countless algorithms that Google engineers have invented that have nothing to do with click and query data,” Schmidtlein said.”Their remedy says we want to be on par with all of your ingenuity, and, respectfully your honor, that is not proportional to the conduct of this case.”

French scientist Etienne-Emile Baulieu, the inventor of the abortion pill, died at the age of 98 at his home in Paris on Friday, his wife told AFP.The doctor and researcher, who achieved worldwide renown for his work that led to the pill, had an eventful life that included fighting in the French resistance and becoming friends with artists such as Andy Warhol.”His research was guided by his commitment to the progress made possible by science, his dedication to women’s freedom, and his desire to enable everyone to live better, longer lives,” Baulieu’s wife Simone Harari Baulieu said in a statement. French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to his life, calling him “a beacon of courage” and “a progressive mind who enabled women to win their freedom”.”Few French people have changed the world to such an extent,” he added in a post on X.Baulieu’s most famous discovery helped create the oral drug RU-486, also known as mifepristone, which provided a safe and inexpensive alternative to surgical abortion to millions of women across the world.For decades, he pushed governments to authorise the drug, facing fierce criticism and sometimes threats from opponents of abortion. When Wyoming became the first US state to outlaw the abortion pill in 2023, Baulieu told AFP it was “scandalous”.Then aged 96, Baulieu said he had dedicated a large part of his life to “increasing the freedom of women,” and such bans were a step in the wrong direction.On news of his death, French Equality Minister Aurore Berge passed on her condolences to Baulieu’s family, saying on X he was “guided throughout his life by one requirement: human dignity.”- ‘Fascinated by artists’ -Born on December 12, 1926 in Strasbourg to Jewish parents, Etienne Blum was raised by his feminist mother after his father, a doctor, died.He changed his name to Emile Baulieu when he joined the French resistance against Nazi occupation at the age of 15, then later adding Etienne.After the war, he became a self-described “doctor who does science,” specialising in the field of steroid hormones.Invited to work in the United States, Baulieu was noticed in 1961 by Gregory Pincus, known as the father of the contraceptive pill, who convinced him to focus on sex hormones.Back in France, Baulieu designed a way to block the effect of the hormone progesterone, which is essential for the egg to implant in the uterus after fertilisation.This led to the development of mifepristone in 1982.Dragged before the courts and demonised by US anti-abortion groups who accused him of inventing a “death pill”, Baulieu refused to back down.”Adversity slides off him like water off a duck’s back,” Simone Harari Baulieu told AFP.”You, a Jew and a resistance fighter, you were overwhelmed with the most atrocious insults and even compared to Nazi scientists,” Macron said as he presented Baulieu with France’s top honour in 2023.”But you held on, for the love of freedom and science.”In the 1960s, literature fan Baulieu became friends with artists such as Andy Warhol.He said he was “fascinated by artists who claim to have access to the human soul, something that will forever remain beyond the reach of scientists.”- Alzheimer’s, depression research -Baulieu kept going into his Parisian office well into his mid-90s.”I would be bored if I did not work anymore,” he said in 2023.His recent research has included trying to find a way to prevent the development of Alzheimer’s disease, as well as a treatment for severe depression, for which clinical trials are currently underway across the world.”There is no reason we cannot find treatments” for both illnesses, he said.Baulieu was also the first to describe how the hormone DHEA secreted from adrenal glands in 1963. He was convinced of the hormone’s anti-ageing abilities, but drugs using it only had limited effects, such as in skin-firming creams.In the United States, Baulieu was also awarded the prestigious Lasker prize in 1989.After his wife Yolande Compagnon died, Baulieu married Simone Harari in 2016.He leaves behind three children, eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren, according to the statement released by his family.

Pop sensation Taylor Swift, who was locked in a feud with record executives since 2019 over ownership of her music, has bought back the rights to her entire back catalog, she said Friday.”All of the music I’ve ever made … now belongs … to me,” she wrote on her website, after years of disputes over her first six albums, a number of which she rerecorded to create copies she owns herself.”To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it,” she wrote in the letter to her devoted followers.”To my fans, you know how important this has been to me — so much so that I meticulously re-recorded and released four of my albums, calling them Taylor’s Version.”Those records included the award-winning “Reputation” and “Taylor Swift.”Swift bought back her masters from Shamrock Capital, an LA investment firm, for an undisclosed amount.The re-recording power move came in the wake of public sparring with industry mogul Scooter Braun, her one-time manager whose company had purchased her previous label and gained a majority stake in her early work.He later sold Swift’s master rights to the private equity company.- ‘This fight’ -The situation left Swift publicly incensed: “I just feel that artists should own their work,” she said in 2019.”She’s a vocal advocate for artists’ rights,” Ralph Jaccodine, a professor at the Berklee College of Music, told AFP previously.  “She’s built her own brand.”Before her public efforts to regain control of her work, Prince, George Michael, Jay-Z and Kanye West all also fought for control of their masters — one-of-a-kind source material that dictate how songs are reproduced and sold — but none had gone so far as to re-record them completely.The queen of pop, whose recent nearly two-year-long, $2 billion Eras tour shattered records, said that she was “heartened by the conversations this saga has reignited within my industry.”Swift’s lucrative tour which wrapped last year was a showbusiness sensation, and will have helped offset the costs of buying back her catalog.The 149 shows across the world typically clocked in at more than three hours long each.Tour tickets sold for sometimes exorbitant prices and drew in millions of fans, along with many more who didn’t get in and were willing to simply sing along from the parking lot.”Every time a new artist tells me they negotiated to own their master recordings in their record contract because of this fight, I’m reminded of how important it was for all this to happen,” Swift said in her letter.

Pop sensation Taylor Swift, locked in a feud with record executives since 2019 over ownership of her music, has bought back the rights to her entire back catalog, she said Friday.”All of the music I’ve ever made … now belongs … to me,” she wrote on her website, after years of dispute over her first six albums, a number of which she has rerecorded to create copies she owns herself.”To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it,” she wrote in the letter penned to fans. “To my fans, you know how important this has been to me — so much so that I meticulously re-recorded and released four of my albums, calling them Taylor’s Version.”Thos records included the award-winning “Reputation” and “Taylor Swift.”Swift bought back her masters from Shamrock Capital, an LA investment firm, for an undisclosed amount.The queen of pop, whose recent nearly two-year-long, $2 billion Eras tour shattered records, said that she was “heartened by the conversations this saga has reignited within my industry.”Swift’s ultra-lucrative tour which wrapped last year was a showbusiness sensation, and will have helped offset the costs of buying back her catalog.The 149 shows across the world typically clocked in at more than three hours long each.Eras tour tickets sold for sometimes exorbitant prices and drew in millions of fans, along with many more who didn’t get in and were willing to simply sing along from the parking lot.

Elon Musk faced accusations Friday that he used so much ketamine on the 2024 campaign trail that he developed bladder problems, as the billionaire prepared to give a farewell press conference with Donald Trump.A New York Times report that Musk’s drug use had caused concerns was published just hours before he was to appear with Trump in the White House on his last day as the US government’s cost cutter-in-chief.The newspaper said the world’s richest man also took ecstasy and mushrooms and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).The South African-born tech tycoon, the biggest donor to Trump’s 2024 election campaign, told people that ketamine, an anesthetic that can cause dissociation, had affected his bladder, the NYT added, noting that it was a known effect of long-term use.Space X and Tesla boss Musk did not immediately comment, but the White House played down the report.Asked if he was concerned about alleged drug use by Musk, Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told reporters: “The drugs that we’re concerned about are the drugs running across the southern border.”Trump’s administration has pledged to crack down on migration and the flow of the opiate fentanyl from Mexico.Miller separately told CNN when asked if Musk had been drug tested while working for the White House: “You’ll have the opportunity to ask Elon all the questions you want today yourself.”Musk has previously admitted to taking ketamine, saying he was prescribed it to treat a “negative frame of mind” and suggesting his use of drugs benefited his work.- ‘Terrific’ -The latest claims will add to the challenge of putting a positive spin on Musk’s departure after just four turbulent months.Trump has announced a joint press conference in the Oval Office at 1.30 pm (1730 GMT). The president praised the “terrific” Musk on Thursday and insisted that his influence would continue despite him returning to his companies.”This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way,” Trump said on his Truth Social network.But the news conference will be a far cry from Musk’s first appearance in the Oval Office in February, when he brought his young son with him and outshone even the attention-seeking president himself.At the time the 53-year-old was almost inseparable from Trump, glued to his side on Air Force One, Marine One, in the White House and at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.Yet Musk is now leaving Trump’s administration under a cloud, after admitting disillusionment with his role and criticizing the Republican president’s spending plans.- ‘Disappointed’ -The right-wing magnate’s DOGE led an ideologically-driven rampage through the federal government, with its young “tech bros” slashing tens of thousands of jobs.It has also shuttered whole departments including the US Agency for International Development (USAID), leading to huge cuts in foreign aid that critics say will hit some of the world’s poorest people and help US rivals.But DOGE’s achievements fell far short of Musk’s boasts when he blazed into Washington brandishing a chainsaw at a conservative event and bragged that it would be easy to cut two trillion dollars.In reality, the independent “Doge Tracker” site has counted just $12 billion in savings while the Atlantic magazine put it far lower, at $2 billion.Musk’s “move fast and break things” mantra was also at odds with some of his cabinet colleagues, and he said earlier this week that he was “disappointed” in Trump’s planned mega tax and spending bill as it undermined DOGE’s cuts.Musk’s companies, meanwhile, have suffered.Tesla shareholders called for him to return to work as sales slumped and protests targeted the electric vehicle maker, while Space X had a series of fiery rocket failures.

The US Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure cooled more than expected last month, according to government data published Friday, as President Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs on most countries came into effect.The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index rose 2.1 percent in the 12 months to April, down from a revised 2.3 percent a month earlier, the US Commerce Department said in a statement.This was slightly below the median forecast of 2.2 percent from economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal, and leaves headline inflation just above the Fed’s long-term target of two percent.Headline inflation rose 0.1 percent on a monthly basis, as did a widely watched inflation measure stripping out volatile food and energy costs.So-called “core” inflation rose 2.5 percent from a year ago — also slightly below expectations of a 2.6 percent increase. “We’re seeing evidence that we were on track for a perfect landing when it comes to inflation,” EY Chief Economist Gregory Daco told AFP.”But that unfortunately came before the tariff storm that is likely to lead to an inflationary acceleration over the course of the summer.”Much of the monthly increase came from a 0.5 percent rise in the indices for durable goods and energy, counterbalanced by a 0.3 percent fall in food prices, according to the Commerce Department. Personal income increased by 0.8 percent last month on a seasonally adjusted basis, beating expectations.And personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income — a measure of how much consumers are saving — jumped to 4.9 percent in April from a revised 4.3 percent a month earlier.”President Donald J. Trumps economic agenda is working,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X.”Inflation is down, income is up, and the trade deficit just fell by the largest amount on record,” she said, referring to the April advanced international trade deficit data, also published Friday, which fell 46 percent from a month earlier to $87.6 billion.- Tariffs effect -Trump’s decision to roll out sweeping 10 percent levies on most countries on April 2, and significantly higher duties on dozens of trading partners days later — since paused — has been met by a flurry of legal action.The court battles threaten to undermine his administration’s plans to use tariffs to raise revenue and punish partners running large trade deficits with the United States. This week, the US Court of International Trade ruled that Trump had overstepped his authority, only for a federal judge to temporarily overrule their decision a day later to allow the tariff plans to continue, for now.Daco from EY said while it was too soon for the tariffs to start having a meaningful impact on the data, there were signs that they were starting to push up prices, noting that the cost of furniture had risen after the “liberation day” duties came into effect. “That bodes poorly for the inflation outlook over the coming months, as we’re likely to see more of the tariffs filter through to prices and in turn, weigh on consumer spending,” he said. Daco’s views on the economic impact of tariffs chime with those of many economists, who expect the new levies to push up prices and slow growth — at least temporarily — a view disputed by the Trump administration.

US President Donald Trump signaled renewed trade tensions with China on Friday, arguing that Beijing had “violated” a deal to de-escalate tariffs, at a time when both sides appeared deadlocked in negotiations.Trump’s post on his Truth Social platform came hours after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that trade talks with China were “a bit stalled,” in an interview with broadcaster Fox News.The world’s two biggest economies had agreed this month to temporarily lower staggeringly high tariffs they had imposed on each other, in a pause to last 90 days, after talks between top officials in Geneva.But on Friday, Trump wrote that: “China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US,” without providing further details.Asked about the post on CNBC, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer took aim at Beijing for continuing to “slow down and choke off things like critical minerals.”He added that the United States’ trade deficit with China “continues to be enormous,” and that Washington was not seeing major shifts in Beijing’s behavior.”The Chinese are slow-rolling their compliance, which is completely unacceptable,” Greer said.On Thursday, Bessent suggested that Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping could get involved in the situation.Bessent said there could be a call between both leaders eventually, a characterization that Greer agreed with.US stock markets fell in early trading amid jitters about the China trade tensions.- Forthcoming deals? -Washington is also in “intensive talks” with other key trading partners, Greer told CNBC, saying he has meetings next week with counterparts from Malaysia, Vietnam and the European Union.The meetings come as he heads to Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development talks in Europe.”The negotiations are on track, and we do hope to have some deals in the next couple of weeks,” Greer said.But Trump’s tariff plans are facing legal challenges.A trade court ruled this week that the president overstepped his authority in tapping emergency economic powers to justify sweeping tariffs.It blocked the most wide-ranging levies since Trump returned to office, although this ruling has been put on hold for now as an appeals process is ongoing.The decision left intact, however, tariffs that Trump imposed on sector-specific imports such as steel and autos.Greer said it was important to get through the legal process so partners have a “better understanding of the landing zone.”Since Trump returned to the presidency in January, he has imposed sweeping tariffs on most US trading partners, with especially high rates on imports from China.New tit-for-tat levies from both sides reached three digits before the de-escalation this month, where Washington agreed to temporarily reduce its additional tariffs on Chinese imports from 145 percent to 30 percent.China, meanwhile, lowered its added duties from 125 percent to 10 percent.The US tariff level is higher as it also includes a 20 percent levy that the Trump administration recently imposed on Chinese goods over the country’s alleged role in the illicit drug trade — an issue that Beijing has pushed back against.The high US-China tariffs, while they were in place, forced much trade between both countries to grind to a halt, as businesses paused shipments to try and wait for both governments to reach an agreement to lower the levies.

Half the global population endured an additional month of extreme heat over the past year because of manmade climate change, a new study found Friday.The findings underscore how the continued burning of fossil fuels is harming health and well-being on every continent, with the effects especially under-recognized in developing countries, the authors said.”With every barrel of oil burned, every tonne of carbon dioxide released, and every fraction of a degree of warming, heat waves will affect more people,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and co-author of the report.The analysis — conducted by scientists at World Weather Attribution, Climate Central, and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre — was released ahead of global Heat Action Day on June 2, which this year spotlights the dangers of heat exhaustion and heat stroke.To assess the influence of global warming, researchers analyzed the period from May 1, 2024 to May 1, 2025. They defined “extreme heat days” as those hotter than 90 percent of temperatures recorded at a given location between 1991 and 2020. Using a peer-reviewed modeling approach, they then compared the number of such days to a simulated world without human-caused warming.The results were stark: roughly four billion people — 49 percent of the global population — experienced at least 30 more days of extreme heat than they would have otherwise. The team identified 67 extreme heat events during the year and found the fingerprint of climate change on all of them.The Caribbean island of Aruba was the worst affected, recording 187 extreme heat days — 45 more than expected in a world without climate change.The study follows a year of unprecedented global temperatures. 2024 was the hottest year on record, surpassing 2023, while January 2025 marked the hottest January ever. On a five-year average, global temperatures are now 1.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — and in 2024 alone, they exceeded 1.5C, the symbolic ceiling set by the Paris climate accord.The report also highlights a critical lack of data on heat-related health impacts in lower-income regions. While Europe recorded more than 61,000 heat-related deaths in the summer of 2022, comparable figures are sparse elsewhere, with many heat-related fatalities misattributed to underlying conditions such as heart or lung disease.The authors emphasized the need for early warning systems, public education, and heat action plans tailored to cities. Better building design — including shading and ventilation — and behavioral adjustments like avoiding strenuous activity during peak heat are also essential.Still, adaptation alone will not be enough. The only way to halt the rising severity and frequency of extreme heat, the authors warned, is to rapidly phase out fossil fuels.

He’s the maverick medic who loved to confound the medical establishment with his brilliant, unorthodox diagnoses.But Dr Gregory House, the misanthropic genius who was the star of the long-running “House” television series, got an awful lot wrong himself, Croatian doctors claim.From a neurologist at work on the wrong end of a patient by performing a colonoscopy, or an MRI scan done by a physician who is clearly not a radiologist, Croatian researchers have pulled the American series up on its medical accuracy in a paper published this month. Denis Cerimagic, a professor at Dubrovnik University, and two fellow neurologists — all big fans of the series — listed 77 errors after analysing all 177 episodes of the show, which ran from 2004 to 2012.”We focused on the diagnoses of main cases, reality of clinical practice presentation and detection of medical errors,” Cerimagic told AFP. He and his peers — Goran Ivkic and Ervina Bilic — broke the mistakes down into five categories including misuses of medical terminology, misinformation and simple weirdness — something which the show’s anti-hero, played by British star Hugh Laurie, possessed in abundance.- That limp -They included the use of mercury thermometers — which had long given way to digital ones — the term heart attack and cardiac arrest being used interchangeably when they are not the same, and that vitamin B12 deficiency can be corrected with just one injection.Nor is there a universal chemotherapy for all types of malignant tumours, as one episode suggested.But arguably the biggest error of all is that Laurie — whose character’s genius for deduction comes from the misdiagnosis that left him with a limp and chronic pain — uses his cane on the wrong side.The stick should be carried on his unaffected side, Cerimagic said, though he understood why the actor had done it because “it’s more effective to see the pronounced limp on the screen”.Their research also found medical procedures being done by specialists who had no business being there, like an infectologist performing an autopsy.At times the series also stretched reality beyond breaking point, with the findings of complex laboratory tests done in just a few hours. And doctors rarely turn detective and take it upon themselves to enter patients’ homes to look for environmental causes of illnesses.Not to mention Dr House’s unethical behaviour — “Brain tumour, she’s gonna die” the paper quoted him as saying — and the character’s opiates addiction. The researchers say they may have missed other mistakes.”We are neurologists while other medical specialists would certainly establish additional errors,” Cerimagic added.- Medical errors -Whatever their criticisms, the researchers say that modern medical series are far better produced than in the past, thanks to medical advisors.It is not like some 20 years ago when you had doctors looking at X-rays upside down, the neurologist said.”Now only medical professionals can notice errors,” Cerimagic said.Despite its flaws, they thought the series could even be used to help train medical students.”The focus could be on recognising medical errors in the context of individual episodes, adopting the teamwork concept and a multidisciplinary approach in diagnosis and treatment,” Cerimagic said.He said he and his colleagues were taken aback by the response to their paper “House M.D.: Between reality and fiction” — which is not the first academic study to cast doubt on the good doctor and his methods.”The idea was to make a scientific paper interesting not only to doctors but also to people without specific medical knowledge.”