AFP USA

A 54-year-old man convicted of a 1993 revenge killing is to be put to death in Florida on Tuesday in the 26th execution in the United States this year, the most in a decade.Michael Bell is to executed by lethal injection at 6:00 pm (2200 GMT) at the Florida State Prison in Raiford for the murders of Jimmy West, 23, and Tamecka Smith, 18.There have been seven executions in Florida this year and 25 across the nation. Bell’s execution will take the US total for the year to 26, the most since the 28 executions in 2015.Nine other executions are currently scheduled this year.Bell was convicted in 1995 of shooting West and Smith outside a liquor store in Jacksonville and sentenced to death.According to court records, Bell was seeking revenge for the killing of his brother Lamar Bell several months earlier by West’s half-brother, Theodore Wright.Citing new evidence and recanted trial testimony, Bell has been seeking to halt his execution but the Florida Supreme Court denied his latest appeal, saying the evidence of his guilt was “overwhelming.”Twenty executions have been carried out by lethal injection in the United States this year. Two have been by firing squad and three by nitrogen hypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a face mask, causing the prisoner to suffocate.The use of nitrogen gas as a method of capital punishment has been denounced by United Nations experts as cruel and inhumane.The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place.President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment, and on his first day in office called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”

US consumer inflation picked up in line with analyst expectations last month, government data showed Tuesday, as policymakers try to gauge how President Donald Trump’s ever-growing list of tariffs is affecting the economy.Observers are expecting to learn more about the effects of Trump’s duties over the summer months, meaning June’s data marks the start in a series of closely-watched figures — particularly as officials mull changes to interest rates as well.The consumer price index (CPI) was up 2.7 percent from a year ago in June, rising from the 2.4 percent figure in May as energy costs rose, said the Department of Labor.Other areas that saw cost increases included household furnishings and apparel, both segments that experts are eyeing for signs of cost hikes after Trump’s sweeping tariffs this year.While Trump imposed a 10 percent tariff on almost all trading partners in April and separately slapped steeper duties on imports of steel, aluminum and autos, US officials have pushed back against warnings that these could spark price increases.Economists caution that tariff hikes could fuel inflation and weigh on economic growth, but US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has labeled such expectations “tariff derangement syndrome.”CPI rose 0.3 percent in June from the previous month, an uptick from the 0.1 percent increase in May as well.Excluding the volatile food and energy segments, CPI climbed 0.2 percent on-month, picking up from May too.Compared with a year ago, “core” CPI was up 2.9 percent in June.Even if headline inflation figures show no “meaningful” surge because of tariffs alone, Nationwide economist Oren Klachkin warned it may be too soon to see their full impact just yet.Businesses have been trying to hold off consumer price hikes through a range of actions, from eating into their own margins to trying to share costs with their suppliers, he said.But it remains to be seen how long they can do this.There could be a bigger impact over the summer, Klachkin added.For now, he is looking “under the surface” at components most exposed to Trump’s tariffs, such as furnishings, recreational goods and cellphones, to discern their effects.Besides steep tariffs that have already taken effect, Trump has also threatened even higher levels on dozens of key trading partners including the European Union, India, Japan and South Korea if they do not strike deals to avert these elevated levels.He has also opened doors to further levies on sector-specific imports ranging from semiconductors to pharmaceuticals, injecting more uncertainty in the global economy and worries of supply chain snags.

Computer drives containing unreleased music by US superstar Beyonce and plans related to her concerts were stolen last week in Atlanta, police said Monday, with a suspect still at large.The items were stolen from a rental car used by Beyonce’s choreographer and a dancer on July 8, two days before the pop icon kicked off the Atlanta leg of her “Cowboy Carter” tour, a police incident report said.Choreographer Christopher Grant, 37, told police that he returned to the car to find its rear-window smashed and their luggage stolen.Inside were multiple jump drives that “contained water marked music, some un-released music, footage plans for the show, and past and future set list (sic),” the report said.Also missing were an Apple MacBook, headphones and several items of luxury clothing.Police investigated an area where the MacBook and headphones had pinged their location, but the report did not mention any items being recovered.Atlanta Police said in an online statement that a warrant had been issued for an unnamed suspect’s arrest, but that the suspect remained at large.The “Cowboy Carter” tour kicked off in April after the global superstar took home her first “Album of the Year” Grammy for the 2024 album.The sweeping country-themed work saw Beyonce stake out musical territory in a different genre from much of her previous discography.The ambitious, historically rooted album also aimed to elevate and showcase the work of other Black artists in country music, whose rich contributions the industry has repeatedly sidelined.As her stadium tour to promote the album winds down, Beyonce ended her four-night stint in Atlanta on Monday, with two final performances set for late July in Las Vegas.

The Pentagon announced contracts on Monday with multiple leading US artificial intelligence firms including Elon Musk’s xAI, which has faced intense scrutiny in recent days over anti-Semitic posts by its Grok chatbot.Each of the contracts to xAI, Anthropic, Google and OpenAI have a ceiling value of $200 million, the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) said in a statement.The awards will enable the Department of Defense “to leverage the technology and talent of US frontier AI companies to develop agentic AI workflows across a variety of mission areas,” it said.The contract with xAI comes just days after the company was forced to apologize again for controversial posts by its Grok chatbot.After an update on July 7, the chatbot praised Adolf Hitler in some responses on the X social media platform, denounced “anti-white hate,” and described Jewish representation in Hollywood as “disproportionate.”xAI apologized for the extremist and offensive messages, and said it had corrected the instructions that led to the incidents.The release on Wednesday of Grok 4, the latest chatbot version, was almost met with scrutiny after it appeared to consult Musk’s positions on some questions it was asked before responding.The contract between xAI and the Department of Defense comes even as Musk and President Donald Trump have publicly feuded in recent weeks.Musk, a top backer of Trump’s most recent presidential campaign, was entrusted with managing the new agency known as DOGE to massively slash government spending under the current administration.After ending his assignment in May, the South African-born entrepreneur publicly criticized Trump’s major budget bill for increasing government debt. The president and the businessman engaged in heated exchanges on social media and in public statements before Musk apologized for some of his more combative messages.- ‘Critical national security needs’ -The government and the defense sector are considered a potential growth driver for AI giants.Musk’s xAI announced on Monday the launch of a “Grok for Government” service, following a similar initiative by OpenAI.In addition to the Pentagon contract, “every federal government department, agency, or office (can now) purchase xAI products” thanks to its inclusion on an official supplier list, xAI said.Meta meanwhile has partnered with the start-up Anduril to develop virtual reality headsets for soldiers and law enforcement.OpenAI had previously announced in June that it had secured a Defense Department contract with a ceiling of $200 million.”Establishing these partnerships will broaden DoD use of and experience in frontier AI capabilities and increase the ability of these companies to understand and address critical national security needs with the most advanced AI capabilities U.S. industry has to offer,” said the CDAO statement on Monday.

Al Tomson, mayor of a tiny town tucked away in an idyllic corner of the eastern United States, points to a spot on a map of his region.”The power plant would be there,” says the former military man, who is fighting against construction of the mysterious project on the outskirts of Davis, designed to power a vast data center.Tomson, whose town is about a three-hour drive from Washington and is home to 600 people, says the plant is being “crammed down our throats” by the state government. This fight in the woods of rural West Virginia is the latest example of the war between the US tech sector — and its rapidly rising need for energy to power the AI boom — and the communities it affects.In a scramble to quickly bring more data centers online, US cloud computing giants are now getting directly involved in energy production. And while they are using some renewable energy options and trying to revive nuclear power, they are also turning to fossil fuels like gas, which in the United States is relatively cheap.In neighboring Pennsylvania, a former coal plant will now run on gas to power a data center.In Georgia, xAI, the Elon Musk-owned company behind the Grok chatbot, directly connected 35 methane turbines to its servers, all without permits, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center NGO.Data centers’ share of US electricity demand is expected to rise from current levels of around five percent to between 6.7 percent and 12 percent by 2028, according to government estimates.- Powerlessness -The US electrical grid is facing demand growth “that we haven’t seen for more than a generation,” says Todd Snitchler, head of the Electric Power Supply Association, which represents many producers.To respond, they are acting on all fronts. Across the country, the retirement of old power plants is being postponed and additional turbines are being added while waiting for new plants to be built.But AI’s thirst for energy is such that more and more tech giants are building their own power plants off the grid — even if it means doing so against residents’ wishes.In Davis, the mayor and hundreds of his constituents have been fighting since April against Fundamental Data’s power plant project. For Mayor Tomson, the firm is just a “shell company” laying the early groundwork on behalf of an unidentified major tech company. Fundamental Data did not respond to multiple requests for comment from AFP.In the mayor’s office hangs a printed map showing that the gas turbines, with their toxic emissions, would be located about a mile from residents of this nature-blessed tourist town.But Tomson feels powerless. West Virginia recently adopted a law that, in order to attract billions of dollars in data center investment, prohibits local officials from taking measures opposing them.- Global competition -The frustration of Davis residents boiled over during a particularly tense public meeting at the end of June. For five hours, about 300 people attended the meeting with regulators responsible for approving an initial air quality permit, which is likely to be granted.Afterward, volunteers distributed “No data center complex” signs to install in people’s front yards. Some were already posted in shop windows.Davis’s residents say they just want to keep their corner of the Appalachians free from pollution — but there are powerful political and economic forces against them.”A failure to power the data centers needed to win the AI arms race… could result in adversary nations shaping digital norms and controlling digital infrastructure, thereby jeopardizing US economic and national security,” warned a recent US Department of Energy report.Some in Davis and West Virginia favor these projects, seeing them as an opportunity to re-industrialize an economically devastated region. The proposed plant would be built on the site of a former coal mine, for example.Since mining jobs left, “we need something here to keep our younger people,” said Charles Davis, who lives in nearby Thomas.Jojo Pregley, however, wants nothing to do with it. “A lot of people are battling cancer here,” she says, sitting on a bench in front of her house with her husband Pat, who spent 40 years working in the mines. “We don’t want more pollution from data centers or whatever else.”

The artificial intelligence industry is scrambling to reduce its massive energy consumption through better cooling systems, more efficient computer chips, and smarter programming — all while AI usage explodes worldwide.AI depends entirely on data centers, which could consume three percent of the world’s electricity by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. That’s double what they use today.Experts at McKinsey, a US consulting firm, describe a race to build enough data centers to keep up with AI’s rapid growth, while warning that the world is heading toward an electricity shortage.”There are several ways of solving the problem,” explained Mosharaf Chowdhury, a University of Michigan professor of computer science.Companies can either build more energy supply — which takes time and the AI giants are already scouring the globe to do — or figure out how to consume less energy for the same computing power.Chowdhury believes the challenge can be met with “clever” solutions at every level, from the physical hardware to the AI software itself.For example, his lab has developed algorithms that calculate exactly how much electricity each AI chip needs, reducing energy use by 20-30 percent.- ‘Clever’ solutions -Twenty years ago, operating a data center — encompassing cooling systems and other infrastructure — required as much energy as running the servers themselves. Today, operations use just 10 percent of what the servers consume, says Gareth Williams from consulting firm Arup. This is largely through this focus on energy efficiency.Many data centers now use AI-powered sensors to control temperature in specific zones rather than cooling entire buildings uniformly.This allows them to optimize water and electricity use in real-time, according to McKinsey’s Pankaj Sachdeva.For many, the game-changer will be liquid cooling, which replaces the roar of energy-hungry air conditioners with a coolant that circulates directly through the servers.”All the big players are looking at it,” Williams said.This matters because modern AI chips from companies like Nvidia consume 100 times more power than servers did two decades ago.Amazon’s world-leading cloud computing business, AWS, last week said it had developed its own liquid method to cool down Nvidia GPUs in its servers – – avoiding have to rebuild existing data centers.”There simply wouldn’t be enough liquid-cooling capacity to support our scale,” Dave Brown, vice president of compute and machine learning services at AWS, said in a YouTube video.- US vs China -For McKinsey’s Sachdeva, a reassuring factor is that each new generation of computer chips is more energy-efficient than the last.Research by Purdue University’s Yi Ding has shown that AI chips can last longer without losing performance.”But it’s hard to convince semiconductor companies to make less money” by encouraging customers to keep using the same equipment longer, Ding added.Yet even if more efficiency in chips and energy consumption is likely to make AI cheaper, it won’t reduce total energy consumption.”Energy consumption will keep rising,” Ding predicted, despite all efforts to limit it. “But maybe not as quickly.”In the United States, energy is now seen as key to keeping the country’s competitive edge over China in AI.In January, Chinese startup DeepSeek unveiled an AI model that performed as well as top US systems despite using less powerful chips — and by extension, less energy.DeepSeek’s engineers achieved this by programming their GPUs more precisely and skipping an energy-intensive training step that was previously considered essential.China is also feared to be leagues ahead of the US in available energy sources, including from renewables and nuclear.

Ever since his political rise a decade ago, Donald Trump has sung the praises of Vladimir Putin — the Russian president was a “strong leader” who, perhaps more important, would often say “very good things” about him.With his announcement Monday of new arms for Ukraine via Europe and tariff threats on Russia, Trump’s bromance with Putin has hit a new low — but it may not have run its course.Trump, who had vowed to end the Ukraine war within a day of returning to the White House, said he was “disappointed” in Putin, who has kept attacking Ukraine as if the leaders’ telephone conversations “didn’t mean anything.””I go home, I tell the first lady, ‘You know, I spoke to Vladimir today, we had a wonderful conversation. She said, ‘Oh really? Another city was just hit.'””I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy. It’s been proven over the years. He’s fooled a lot of people,” Trump said.Trump quickly rejected that he was among those fooled and again insisted that the 2022 invasion of Ukraine was the fault of his predecessor Joe Biden, who championed a hard line on Russia.Brandishing his favorite weapon, Trump gave Russia 50 days to comply before facing 100 percent tariffs on countries that purchase from Russia, but stopped short of backing a bill before Congress for up to 500 percent tariffs.Russia’s own trade with the United States has slowed down a trickle.Trump had “promised that he could get Putin to the negotiating table, and he has failed to do that,” said Heather Conley, a former State Department policymaker on Russia now at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.His tariff threat “shows frustration that he has failed to do it, but I don’t see it as a big policy change,” she said.- The great deal-maker? -Trump stunned European allies on February 28 when he publicly berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, telling him he was ungrateful for billions of dollars in weapons under Biden. Trump then briefly held up new military and intelligence.For the US president, a transactional-minded businessman, Putin committed a key offense — undermining Trump’s self-image as a deal-maker.”For six months, President Trump tried to entice Putin to the table. The attacks have gone up, not down,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally who has led the push for tough new sanctions on Russia, told CBS News show “Face The Nation.””One of the biggest miscalculations Putin has made is to play Trump,” Graham said.Yet Trump has repeatedly shown a willingness to trust Putin, despite firm warnings from within the US government.Most famously, he sided with Putin over US intelligence at a 2018 news conference after they met in Helsinki after the Russian president denied meddling to support Trump in his first election.For observers of Putin, the longest-serving leader in Moscow since Stalin, there was never much chance he would accept compromise on Ukraine or work with the West.Putin has rued the demise of Russia’s influence with the fall of the Soviet Union as a historic calamity and rejected the idea that Ukraine has its own historical identity.With Russia making small but steady gains on the battlefield and bringing in North Korean troops, Putin has put his entire country on war footing, Conley said.”The Kremlin has thrown everything into this,” she said.”President Putin believes that this is just going to be a slow erosion of Ukraine’s position and the West’s position, and he will win this conflict on its own merits,” she said.Mark Montgomery, a retired US rear admiral and Senate policy aide, said Putin believed in what has been referred to as TACO — Trump Always Chickens Out.Putin “thought he could take it to the limit each time, and he found out he was wrong,” said Montgomery, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish research group.”I don’t think this stops until Putin feels either weapons system pain or economic pain that he cannot sustain.”

A divided US Supreme Court gave President Donald Trump the green light on Monday to resume dismantling the Education Department.The conservative-dominated court, in an unsigned order, lifted a stay that had been placed by a federal district judge on mass layoffs at the department.The three liberal justices on the nine-member panel dissented.Trump pledged during his White House campaign to eliminate the Education Department, which was created by an act of Congress in 1979, and he moved in March to slash its workforce by nearly half.Trump instructed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “put herself out of a job.”Around 20 states joined teachers’ unions in challenging the move in court, arguing that the Republican president was violating the principle of separation of powers by encroaching on Congress’s prerogatives.In May, District Judge Myong Joun ordered the reinstatement of hundreds of fired Education Department employees.The Supreme Court lifted the judge’s order without explanation, just days after another ruling that cleared the way for Trump to carry out mass firings of federal workers in other government departments.Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent joined by justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, said in the Education ruling that “only Congress has the power to abolish the Department.””The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave,” Sotomayor said.Traditionally, the federal government has had a limited role in education in the United States, with only about 13 percent of funding for primary and secondary schools coming from federal coffers, the rest being funded by states and local communities.But federal funding is invaluable for low-income schools and students with special needs. And the federal government has been essential in enforcing key civil rights protections for students.After returning to the White House in January, Trump directed federal agencies to prepare sweeping workforce reduction plans as part of wider efforts by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — previously headed by Elon Musk — to downsize the government.Trump has moved to fire tens of thousands of government employees and slash programs — targeting diversity initiatives and abolishing the Education Department, the US humanitarian aid agency USAID and others.

Professional players unions for the five major US sports leagues — baseball, soccer, basketball, football and hockey — appealed on Monday for American lawmakers to reject antitrust exemptions or legal liability shields in new regulations for college athletes.While compensation for professional players seemingly knows no limit, college athletes in the US have only been allowed to begin profiting from their performance and reputation in recent years. Now, professional players are weighing in as Congress works to develop a national framework for student athlete profit-sharing, with pros saying they felt a duty to protect future union members while they played in college.”Granting an antitrust exemption to the NCAA and its members gives the green light for the organization and schools to collude and work against student athletes,” the unions’ statement said.”Historically, antitrust exemptions have been used to set prices, limit wages, and restrict access to opportunities provided by open markets, all while shielding abuse from legal recourse.”The joint statement was sent by the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), Major League Soccer Players Association (MLSPA), National Basketball Players Association (NBPA), National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) and National Hockey League Players Association (NHLPA).The US House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce is considering the Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements (SCORE) Act after a House settlement last month ensured National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) athletes will receive revenue sharing from their schools for Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) profits.In a statement last week Congressman Gus Bilirakis, a Florida Republican, said a national framework governing such profit-sharing was long overdue, and praised the SCORE Act saying it “delivers the stability, clarity and transparency” student athletes and colleges need. A 2021 Supreme Court decision held that the NCAA is subject to antitrust laws.In their joint statement, the players’ unions called for transparency and fair-dealing.”It is not hard to imagine a situation where NCAA and its members collude to restrict revenue sharing and deny student athletes fair compensation with the confidence of immunity against legal action. Indeed, they have been doing exactly that for decades.”The NCAA should not have a blank check to impose their will on the financial future of over 500,000 college athletes.”

US lawmakers are on the verge of passing landmark legislation that will give the much-maligned crypto world much-wanted legitimacy, riding on President Donald Trump’s recent embrace of the industry.The US House of Representatives is set to vote on three pieces of legislation this week, including one on the use of stablecoins — cryptocurrencies pegged to safe assets like the dollar — that if passed would immediately go to Trump for his signature.The raft of legislation comes after years of suspicion against the crypto industry amid the belief in the Biden administration that the sector, born out of the success of bitcoin, should be kept on a tight leash and away from mainstream investors.But after crypto investors poured millions of dollars into his presidential campaign last year, Trump reversed his own doubts about the industry, even launching a Trump meme coin and other ventures as he prepared for his return to the White House.According to federal financial disclosure forms released last month, Trump pocketed more than $57 million from the crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, that he launched with his sons last year.Trump has, among other moves, appointed crypto advocate Paul Atkins to head the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).He has also established a federal “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” aimed at auditing the government’s bitcoin holdings, which were mainly accumulated by law enforcement from judicial seizures.And thanks to his backing, Trump could soon be signing the stablecoin bill — dubbed the GENIUS Act — that the US Senate passed last month and that sets rules such as requiring issuers to have reserves of assets equal in value to that of their outstanding cryptocurrency.- ‘Long time coming’ -Stablecoins are considered the safest and least volatile of digital currencies because their value is tied to traditional currency or secure assets such as gold.Another provision of the bill empowers banking regulators to oversee stablecoin issuers in the United States.The legislation could extend the US dollar’s influence in the world of cryptocurrency, with dollar-backed stablecoins seen as financial havens from local currencies prone to big fluctuations.The US House is also considering the CLARITY Act that would establish a clearer regulatory framework for digital assets — including cryptocurrencies and other blockchain-based assets. If passed the bill would require passage in the Senate.The act would clarify and divide regulatory authority between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).Gerald Gallagher, General Counsel at Sei Labs, a digital asset firm, said the bills could be a game changer for the industry.”GENIUS and CLARITY provide security and certainty for investors that previously were not available, either intentionally or unintentionally,” he told AFP.”This has been a long time coming.”The Republican-led House is also considering a bill it calls the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act that aims to block the issuance of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) – a digital dollar issued by the US Federal Reserve.Republicans argue that a CBDC could enable the federal government to monitor, track, and potentially control the financial transactions of private citizens, undermining privacy and civil liberties.It also would require passage in the Senate before going to Trump for his signature.