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Donald Trump lauds Saudi Arabia as he unveils AI and defence deals

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Donald Trump lauds Saudi Arabia as he unveils AI and defence deals

Donald Trump hailed the US’s relationship with Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, just hours after the White House unveiled what it said was $600bn worth of defence, artificial intelligence and other deals with the kingdom. 

The US president lauded the kingdom and its de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as he began the first leg of his dealmaking, three-nation tour of the oil-rich Gulf.

“He’s an incredible man, I’ve known him a long time now. There’s nobody like him,” Trump said to a packed auditorium in Riyadh. Among the guests were Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, private equity baron Stephen Schwarzman, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang and dozens of other US executives.

The US-Saudi relationship had been a “bedrock” of security and prosperity, Trump said. He added: “Today, we reaffirm the bond and take the next steps to make our relationship closer, stronger, more powerful than ever before . . . And it will remain that way.”

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In a press release before Trump’s speech, the White House had hailed “Saudi Arabia’s $600bn commitment to invest in the US” and “economic ties that will endure for generations to come”.

Prince Mohammed said the two countries would work over the coming months to increase the total to $1tn.

“We are working on partnership opportunities with the US worth $600bn, including agreements of more than $300bn announced today during this forum,” the crown prince said.

The deals unveiled by the White House included a commitment by Saudi Arabia’s new state-owned AI company, Humain, to build AI infrastructure in the kingdom using several “hundred thousands” of Nvidia’s most advanced chips over the next five years.

That would make it one of the biggest AI chip orders by a state company, underlining the scale of Prince Mohammed’s ambitions to position Saudi Arabia as a global AI hub and boosting Nvidia’s desire to build “sovereign AI” infrastructure around the world.

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The first phase of Humain’s investment would involve deploying 18,000 of Nvidia’s latest “Blackwell” servers, the chipmaker said. Based on the price of a single Nvidia graphics processing unit, estimated at $30,000-$40,000, the Saudi investment would run into multiple billions of dollars.

AMD, one of Nvidia’s main competitors in the AI chip market, is also co-investing up to $10bn with Humain to deploy its own infrastructure in the country. Amazon made a similar $5bn commitment covering data centre infrastructure.

Nvidia shares rose 5.6 per cent on Tuesday, while AMD’s gained 4 per cent. Amazon was 1.3 per cent higher.

Tesla chief and Trump adviser Elon Musk, left, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang along with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman © Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Jimmy Goodrich, senior adviser for technology analysis to the Rand Corporation think-tank, said the “massive scale” of the Middle East AI announcements would “undoubtedly eat into future US data centre growth”.

“Instead of offshoring the future economic revolution to the Middle East, a better approach would be to channel Gulf state money into American re-industrialisation and energy dominance,” Goodrich said.

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The White House also cited on Tuesday what it said was a “nearly $142bn” agreement to provide Riyadh “with state-of-the-art warfighting equipment and services from over a dozen US defence firms”.

It added this would include air force and space capabilities, missile defence, maritime and border security, land forces modernisation and upgrades to communication systems.

The US also referred to plans by Saudi Arabian DataVolt to invest $20bn in AI data centres and energy infrastructure in the US.

Trump is looking to secure deals and investment pledges worth more than $1tn on his trip to the Gulf, which will also include stops in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

The traditional US allies are among the biggest buyers of American weapons, boast sovereign wealth funds that collectively manage in excess of $3tn and have all stated their ambitions to invest heavily in AI. 

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Many of the US’s most powerful tech executives were also in Riyadh, including Musk, Huang and OpenAI’s Sam Altman as Saudi Arabia hosted a glitzy investment forum. Top financiers including Blackstone’s Schwarzman, BlackRock’s Larry Fink and Citigroup’s Jane Fraser also attended. 

US tech companies have been increasingly looking to the Gulf, which manages some of the world’s largest and most active sovereign wealth funds, to raise capital and lure investments. 

The Trump administration last week scrapped a Biden-era rule under which Saudi Arabia, along with dozens of other countries including India and Singapore, would have faced limitations on their purchases of the most powerful US-designed AI chips.

Riyadh launched Humain, which will be chaired by Prince Mohammed and owned by the Public Investment Fund, the $940bn sovereign wealth fund, to steer its strategy and investments in the sector on Monday, the day before Trump arrived. 

Just days after Trump’s inauguration in January, Prince Mohammed committed Saudi Arabia to investing $600bn in the US over the next four years — the same amount that was announced on Tuesday.

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The UAE followed up with a similar gesture in March, pledging to invest $1.4tn over the next 10 years. It is also seeking to establish itself as a leading AI hub and has taken a strategic decision to invest in US tech. 

Analysts question how the Gulf states will be able to deploy such a vast scale of capital in the timeframes announced, particularly Saudi Arabia as it grapples with lower oil prices, a widening budget deficit and the scale of its own domestic projects.

Additional reporting by Michael Acton in San Francisco

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

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Image from @Bogs4NY via X

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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

The Justice Department sent letters warning election officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that they could face criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting, a spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday.

The letters, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads up the department’s Civil Rights Division, give states five days to explain how they will comply with federal voter eligibility laws and how they will maintain “clean voter lists.”

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“The Department sent these letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.

Noncitizen voting in federal elections is extremely rare, but Trump and his administration have falsely portrayed it as a widespread issue.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson are among those who said they received the letters from the Justice Department.

The letters say state election officers “could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting” noncitizen voting. They further specify that any election officer who knowingly retains noncitizens on a statewide voting registration list or who facilitates noncitizens’ receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability.

“An intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens could also constitute a violation” of federal law, the letters said.

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Henderson wrote on social media that the threats constitute “truly bizarre behavior.”

“Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution,” she wrote. “I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts.”

The letters are the latest move in the Justice Department’s campaign to assert more federal control over state elections.

While some states have complied with the administration’s demands that they hand over voter roll data, the Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for resisting. So far, 11 different federal courts have dismissed the Justice Department’s efforts to seize voter rolls.

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Reigning champion Argentina escapes with remarkable World Cup victory over Egypt

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Reigning champion Argentina escapes with remarkable World Cup victory over Egypt

Lionel Messi #10 of Argentina celebrates scoring his team’s second goal during their World Cup match against Egypt in Atlanta on Tuesday.

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They looked beaten. And out. Argentina, the defending World Cup champion and No. 1-ranked team, was down 2-0 late against Egypt.

Then, in a span of 13 remarkable minutes, Argentina scored not once, not twice, but three times, capping a comeback for the ages and leaving Egypt stunned and shellshocked.

For much of the game in Atlanta, Egypt was in control, hobbling Argentina early. The Egyptian attack began almost immediately with a stunning header goal delivered by Yasser Ibrahim in the 15th minute. After that, Egypt’s defense closed ranks, making it practically impossible for Argentina to equalize.

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It was downhill from there for the Argentines: team captain Lionel Messi failed to convert a penalty kick, and in the 67th minute, Egypt got a second goal from Mostafa Ziko (after an earlier Egyptian goal had been disallowed after a video review). It looked like Argentina was finished. On the brink of elimination.

But no one told the Argentine players that.

In the 79th minute, Lionel Messi began doing his thing. He fired a cross near the Egyptian goal, and Cristian Romero headed it in. Messi was not done. Four minutes later, he powered a shot past the Egyptian keeper. It was his eighth goal of this tournament, the most of any player. The score was 2-2.

Then, in stoppage time, yet another Argentina header and another goal, this time from Enzo Fernandez.

“This is the World Cup for you,” said Messi after the game. “It wasn’t easy to come back from two goals down. But as I always say, this group never gives up. We always try to fight until the end.”

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French referee François Letexier speaks with Egypt forward Mohamed Salah during the World Cup Round of 16 match between Argentina and Egypt in Atlanta.

French referee François Letexier speaks with Egypt forward Mohamed Salah during the World Cup Round of 16 match between Argentina and Egypt in Atlanta.

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Afterward, Egypt coach Hossam Hassan complained about the French referee and the officiating. “I am not convinced. I am not convinced with this outcome. I’m not convinced with the way things unfolded during this match,” said Hassan in a post-match news conference. “We have been treated unfairly today. We have suffered injustice.”

“We would have deserved to earn this win, but we are leaving with honor, with pride, regardless of this defeat,” said Hossan.

African soccer teams have been the stars of this World Cup. Morocco has yet to lose a game. Cape Verde qualified for the first time in its history and stymied Spain, Uruguay and Saudi Arabia. Argentina barely beat them in a nail-biter of a match.

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