Policy & regulation, Consumer, Games, AI
451 storiesMemphis council postpones data center moratorium vote as meeting erupts
The Memphis City Council voted 7-5 on Tuesday night to postpone a vote on a 12-month moratorium on new data centers and five related measures until October 20, prompting chaos at City Hall. Protesters chanted and were cleared from the chamb…
Trump signs order allowing tax-free red-dyed diesel on highways
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday temporarily allowing off-road red-dyed diesel to be used for highway driving and deferring the federal excise tax on that fuel through the end of 2026 without interest or penalties.…
Abu Dhabi launches AiNative programme to train 20,000 government employees in AI
Abu Dhabi's Department of Government Enablement launched AiNative, an AI training programme, at the Ai Everything conference in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday. The programme aims to train 20,000 government employees by the end of 2026 and is part o…
AMD's Lisa Su visits Korea, agrees AI chip cooperation with local firms
AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su visited Korea on Oct. 7, about seven months after her March trip, meeting Second Vice Minister Ryu Je-myeong of the Science and ICT Ministry and a roundtable of Korean AI semiconductor and infrastructure companies.…
Defense minister: arts, sports military service exemption to be cut and abolished
South Korea's defense minister said on Oct 7 that the goal is to gradually reduce the arts and sports military service exemption and ultimately abolish it, after controversy over remarks by Asian Games football gold medallists about the exe…
Meta adds iPad support to Muse AI agent as app tops iPhone charts
Meta released an iPad version of its Muse AI agent, about a month after the app debuted on iPhone, where it has spent several weeks as the top free app on Apple's U.S. App Store. The update adds connectors to software such as Canva, Dropbox…
Abu Dhabi's AI Everything opens with 400 exhibitors alongside Global Food Week
AI Everything 2026 opened on 6 October at the ADNEC Centre Abu Dhabi and runs to 7 October, with WAM reporting 400 exhibitors and 180 speakers, and Economy Middle East reporting more than 400 companies, 200-plus investors managing about $10…
South Korea unveils 1,000 trillion won green transition plan to 2035
South Korea announced a “Korean-style Green Transition” (K-GX) strategy on Oct 7, pledging about 1,000 trillion won over ten years to 2035 — 200 trillion won in fiscal support and more than 790 trillion won in climate finance through five p…
Moscow court fines Zoom 65.9 million rubles for repeat violation of Russian law
A Moscow court fined Zoom about 65.9 million rubles (65,936,494 rubles) for a repeat violation of Russian legislation on foreign internet companies, Interfax, Vedomosti and Kommersant reported. The case was heard under part 3 of article 13.…
Russia proposes letting businesses register at an email address
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko said a draft law has been prepared that would allow legal entities to register a business using an address in a state email system for official correspondence instead of a physical address. He said th…
South Korea's Lee orders CPTPP talks restarted from the beginning amid farm concerns
President Lee Jae-myung instructed at a cabinet meeting on Oct 6 that the government should not fix a conclusion on joining the CPTPP and should “restart dialogue from the beginning,” saying the pact's strategic value is cited alongside ver…
Nvidia-backed Reflection AI unveils Beam, open-weight model to rival Chinese models
Reflection AI unveiled Beam, a 501-billion-parameter open-weight AI model that the New York-based startup says matches leading Chinese open models like Z.ai’s GLM-5.2 at lower compute cost. The Nvidia-backed company says Beam is in final sa…
Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days Begin With Discounts on Apple Macs, AirPods and iPads
Amazon's fall Prime Big Deal Days sale is live, with early discounts on Apple products including AirPods Pro 3 at $179.00, down from $249.00, AirPods Max 2 at $429.00, and about $200 off most M5 MacBook Air models. Outlets also reported all…
FT: EU weighs broad corporate levy to raise taxes on US tech groups
The European Commission is considering a new mechanism to raise more tax revenue from large US technology companies without singling them out as a separate category, the Financial Times reported, citing unnamed sources. Under discussion is …
Finland's finance ministry proposes raising retirement age to 70
Finland's Ministry of Finance has proposed raising the minimum retirement age to 70, according to a report titled “Trust in the Future”. The plan would increase the threshold by six months for each successive age group and forms part of a b…
Amazon’s October Prime Day runs October 6-8 as retailers cut prices early
Amazon’s October Prime Day, also called Prime Big Deal Days, runs from October 6 at 3AM ET through 3AM ET on October 8, with discounts already live, according to The Verge, NBC News and Wired. Wired listed Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 at $190 ($…
Google and Unity to launch AI game platform Unity Spark later this year
Google and Unity announced a strategic partnership to launch an AI game platform for next-generation interactive entertainment. Google's experimental Playground is already live, letting users create playable games from natural-language prom…
Wikimedia reports unauthorized AI agent activity; OpenAI says no link found
The Wikimedia Foundation said it found unauthorized activity by AI agents it believes were operated by OpenAI inside its projects, including edits, most of them test edits in sandboxes. OpenAI said it has so far found no evidence that its A…
SpaceX seeks $40 billion in borrowing to buy Nvidia chips, FT reports
SpaceX is in talks to borrow $40 billion to fund a purchase of Nvidia chips, according to a Financial Times report cited by Reuters and MarketWatch. Bloomberg said it understands the financing would be among the biggest-ever debt financings…
S. Korea farm minister apologises over farmland survey preparation, disputes drone use
Agriculture minister Song Mi-ryung told a parliamentary audit on Oct 7 that the government's full farmland survey does not infringe farmers' private property and that most ordinary, customary violations would not be punished, while saying “…