Senate Democrats press top media regulator Brendan Carr to back off ABC
A group of prominent Senate Democrats sent a letter on Thursday to Brendan Carr, the Trump-aligned Federal Communications Commission chair, asking him to rescind the US media regulator’s order last week requiring ABC to apply early to renew its television licenses.The eight ABC-owned station licenses were not originally up for renewal until 2028 at the earliest and 2031 at the latest; now, the renewal requests must be filed by the end of May.Although Carr told reporters that the early license renewal request stemmed from an ongoing investigation into the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts of ABC’s parent company, Disney, the announcement came just a day after the president and his wife called on the network to fire Jimmy Kimmel, the late-night comedian, for a poorly timed joke.The letter called the early renewal demand an “extraordinary abuse of power” and an “unconstitutional abuse of the Commission’s powers”.“The campaign against Disney and its editorial decision-making, culminating in last week’s early-renewal order, is an egregious abuse of power and a clear violation of the First Amendment,” lawmakers state in the letter led by Senators Edward J Markey, Chuck Schumer, Maria Cantwell and Ben Ray Luján.
Eight other senators also signed the letter.“Although the FCC has the authority to ensure broadcasters operate in the public interest, it cannot serve as President Trump’s roving censor, threatening to revoke licenses against broadcasters whose editorial content – including a comedian’s jokes – displeases the President.”The senators accused Carr of using the FCC’s licensing authority as “a cudgel against broadcasters whose editorial choices displease the President”.The FCC has two other open investigations into ABC, including one based on a 2024 complaint about the network’s moderation of a presidential debate and a more recent inquiry into whether The View, the ABC show, violated equal time rules when it hosted James Talarico, a Senate candidate.The letter includes a series of questions to Carr, with a request that they be answered by 21 May.
The senators asked Carr to “describe the timing and process” used by the FCC to determine that ABC should be forced to apply early for license renewal, and whether FCC lawyers reviewed the order.The letter also asks Carr whether he or his staff communicated with the White House in the days before the order was issued.At an FCC meeting last week, Carr denied that there was any external pressure.“This was a decision that we made inside this building based on where we were in the enforcement matter,” he said.“There was no pressure from the outside.
There was no suggestion from the outside,There was no call for agency action from the outside,”In addition, the senators asked whether the FCC considered any less aggressive steps before issuing the order last week, considering the nearly unprecedented nature of the demand,
Financial stability risks are rising as AI fuels cyber-attacks, IMF warns; oil below $100 on Iran peace hopes – as it happened
Newsflash: The International Monetary Fund is warning that financial stability risks are rising as artificial intelligence fuels cyber-attacks.In a new blogpost, just published, the IMF singles out Claude Mythos as an example of how quickly risks are increasing.The Fund is calling for “resilience, supervision, and international coordination” to safeguard global financial markets, and protect them against attackers with new AI tools.It warns that AI tools such as Mythos can “dramatically” cut the time and cost needed to identify and exploit vulnerabilities, which raises the risk of weaknesses in key systems being discovered and exploited.IMF experts Tobias Adrian, Tamas Gaidosch and Rangachary Ravikumar write:double quotation markMythos could find and exploit vulnerabilities in every major operating system and web browser—even when used by non-experts
Climate campaigners attack Shell over ‘windfall’ profits from Iran war
Shell has reported better than expected profits of $6.9bn (£5bn) after its oil traders reaped the benefits of soaring energy prices during the war in Iran, angering climate campaigners.Europe’s biggest oil and gas company posted a 115% jump in first-quarter profits from the $3.2bn reported in the last three months of 2025.The profits easily surpassed the $6
Europe’s AI translation industry told it risks reputation by partnering with US firms
AI companies in Europe risk losing their world-leading status in the field of machine translation, industry figures have said, after the decision by one of the continent’s leading startups to partner with Amazon’s cloud computing division provoked alarm.While businesses in the EU have generally lagged behind the US and China in AI adoption, a small group of European companies have cornered the global market for high-quality machine translations for professional use.The biggest success story is Cologne-headquartered DeepL, an online translator that regularly outperforms Google Translate in accuracy assessments. Used by governments, courts and half of the Fortune 500 list of highest-earning US companies, last year it was reported to have recorded revenues of $185.2m
Shivon Zilis, mother of four of Elon Musk’s children, testifies in OpenAI trial
Shivon Zilis, a Neuralink executive and the mother of four of Elon Musk’s children, took the stand on Wednesday as one of the most highly anticipated witnesses in Musk’s case against OpenAI. The ChatGPT maker has argued that, while Zilis worked with OpenAI from 2016 to 2023, she was also involved in a secret relationship with Musk, acting as an informant for him.Musk’s case against OpenAI alleges that the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, and president, Greg Brockman, co-founders of the company with Musk, broke a founding agreement when they restructured it from a non-profit to a for-profit enterprise. The Tesla CEO accuses Altman and Brockman of unjustly enriching themselves and wants both removed from their positions at the startup, one of the most valuable in the world. He is also seeking the undoing of the for-profit restructuring and $134bn in damages to be redistributed to OpenAI’s non-profit arm
Jonas Vingegaard targets Grand Tour slam as Giro d’Italia begins in Bulgaria
Jonas Vingegaard’s bid to complete a rare Grand Tour grand slam by winning the 2026 Giro d’Italia begins in Bulgaria on Friday when the double Tour de France winner makes his debut in the Italian race.Vingegaard, the winner of the 2022 and 2023 Tours de France, has been eclipsed by the achievements of Tadej Pogacar – winner this season of nine races in 11 days of racing – but is the outstanding favourite for victory in Rome on 31 May.That is largely because Pogacar is absent. In fact, the Dane will be competing in something of a void, as the world’s best riders skip the Giro to prioritise on the all-consuming Tour de France.Success in his first Giro will make Vingegaard the eighth rider in history to win all three Grand Tours, but the absence of Pogacar, both from last year’s Vuelta field and this spring’s Giro peloton, is likely to overshadow the achievement
From ‘whiff-whaff’ to the Table Tennis World Championships – photo essay
“Table tennis is very good for the mind as well as the body, whatever age you are,” says 73-year-old Wang Qi, the oldest competitor at the Table Tennis Team World Championships in London.Incredibly the Fiji player, who hails from China, is 61 years older than the youngest player, Enya Hu, from Switzerland. Age is evidently no barrier in this increasingly popular sport.Qi and Hu are among 380 men and women representing their nations inside the Copperbox and Wembley Arenas, where extraordinary reflexes and dexterity are showcased by all.This year’s tournament marks a century since the first world championships and comes when the sport is in the global limelight, buoyed up by the Hollywood movie Marty Supreme, starring Timothée Chalamet
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