World
Turkish President makes first official visit to Iraq in over a decade
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan arrived in Iraq on Monday for his first official visit in more than a decade as Ankara seeks greater cooperation from Baghdad in its fight against a Kurdish militant group that has a foothold in Iraq.
Other issues also loom large between the two countries, including water supply and exports of oil and gas from northern Iraq to Turkey, halted for more than a year.
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Erdogan, whose last visit to Baghdad was in 2011, when he was prime minister, met with Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid and Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani as they inked agreements on water management, security, energy and economic cooperation.
“I believe that my visit and the agreements just signed will constitute a new turning point in Turkey-Iraq relations,” Erdoğan said in a joint news conference with al-Sudani.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, right, and Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani shake hands during a welcome ceremony in Ankara, Turkey, Tuesday, March 21, 2023. Erdoğan was set to make his first official visit to Iraq in more than a decade on Monday, April 22, 2024 as his country seeks greater cooperation from Baghdad in its fight against a Kurdish militant group that has a foothold in northern Iraq. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)
Al-Sudani said they discussed “bilateral security coordination, which will meet the needs of both parties and confront the challenges posed by the presence of armed elements that may cooperate with terrorism and violate the security of the two countries.”
Erdoğan’s visit “comes at a sensitive and dangerous time,” al-Sudani added, citing Israel’s war against the Hamas militant group in Gaza — a war that has had ripple effects across the region.
Erdoğan said the leaders had “consulted on the joint steps we can take against the PKK terrorist organization and its extensions, which target Turkey from Iraqi territory,” referring to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a Kurdish separatist movement banned in Turkey.
The PKK has maintained bases in northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region.
Erdoğan had previously announced a major operation against the PKK during the summer, with the aim of “permanently” eradicating the threat it poses. He did not specify what actions Turkish forces would take in Iraq but Turkish forces have in the past carried out numerous ground offensives against PKK in northern Iraq and Turkish jets frequently target suspected PKK sites.
Ankara now aims to create a 19-25 mile deep security corridor along the joint border with Iraq, Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler told journalists last month.
The insurgency — the PKK is fighting for an autonomous Kurdish state in southeast Turkey — has claimed tens of thousands of lives since the 1980s and Turkey and its Western allies have labelled PKK a terrorist organization.
Baghdad has long complained that Turkish actions in Iraq against the PKK violate its sovereignty, but appears to be acquiescing with Ankara’s operations.
In March, after a meeting between the Iraqi and Turkish foreign ministers, Baghdad announced that the Iraqi National Security Council had issued a ban on the PKK, although it stopped short of designating it as a terrorist organization. Erdoğan on Monday praised the ban.
Al-Sudani told journalists during a visit to Washington last week that Iraq and Turkey have “true interests with one another and common projects.” He noted that the PKK has long had a presence in northern Iraq, “but we are not allowing any armed group to be on Iraqi territory and using it as a launchpad for attacks.”
Ankara has argued that PKK’s presence in Iraq threatens the planned construction of a major trade route, the Iraq Development Road, that would connect the port in Basra, southern Iraq, to Turkey and Europe through a network of rail lines and highways.
Baghdad may take a similar approach to the PKK as it has taken to Iranian Kurdish dissident groups based in northern Iraq.
The presence of Iranian dissidents had become a point of tension with Tehran, which periodically launches airstrikes on their bases in Iraq. Last summer, Iran and Iraq reached an agreement to disarm the groups and relocate their members from military bases to displacement camps.
Energy issues and water rights are also key in Iraq-Turkey ties.
An oil pipeline running from the semiautonomous Kurdish region to Turkey has been shut down since March 2023, after an arbitration court ruling ordered Ankara to pay Iraq $1.5 billion for oil exports that bypassed Iraq’s central government in Baghdad. The sharing of oil and gas revenues has long been a contentious issue between Baghdad and Kurdish authorities in Irbil.
In recent years, Iraqi officials have complained that dams built by Turkey are reducing Iraq’s water supply.
The Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which provide most of Iraq’s fresh water, originate in Turkey. Experts fear that climate change is likely to exacerbate existing water shortages in Iraq, with potentially devastating consequences.
Mustafa Hassan, a Baghdad resident, said he hopes that Erdoğan’s visit “will help to solve problems related to water, because Iraq is suffering from a water scarcity crisis, and this affects agriculture.”
Erdoğan said Ankara was aware of the water problems Iraq faces and that the two countries have set up “a joint permanent committee which is going to help through cooperation … taking our shared interests into consideration.”
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The European Commission has announced it is looking into cases of sexually suggestive and explicit images of young girls generated by Grok, the AI chatbot integrated into social media platform X, following the introduction of a paid feature known as “Spicy Mode” last summer.
“I can confirm from this podium that the Commission is also very seriously looking into this matter,” a Commission spokesperson told journalists in Brussels on Monday.
“This is not ‘spicy’. This is illegal. This is appalling. This is disgusting. This has no place in Europe.”
On Sunday, in response to growing anger and alarm at the images, the social media platform said the images had been removed from the platform and that the users involved had been banned.
“We take action against illegal content on X, including Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), by removing it, permanently suspending accounts, and working with local governments and law enforcement as necessary,” the X Safety account posted.
Similar investigations have been opened in France, Malaysia and India.
The European Commission also referenced an episode last November in which Grok generated Holocaust denial content. The Commission said it had sent a request for information under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), and that it is now analysing the response.
In December, X was fined €120 million under the DSA over its handling of account verification check marks and its advertising policy.
“I think X is very well aware that we are very serious about DSA enforcement. They will remember the fine that they have received from us,” said the EU Commission spokesperson.
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Sure, Nvidia, AMD and Intel all had important chip and AI platform announcements on the first day of CES 2026, but all audiences wanted to see more of was Star Wars and Jensen Huang’s little robot buddies.
CES is a huge opportunity annually for companies both large and small to parade products they plan to put on shelves this year. And, as predicted, artificial intelligence was anchored in nearly everything as tech firms continue to look for AI products that will attract customers.
AP has been on the ground looking at booths and covering big announcements, here is a roundup of the highlights we saw on the first day of CES.
Nvidia gets physical
The biggest buzzword in the air at CES is “physical AI,” Nvidia’s term for AI models that are trained in a virtual environment using computer generated, “synthetic” data, then deployed as physical machines once they’ve mastered their purpose.
CEO Jensen Huang showed off Cosmos, an AI foundation model trained on massive datasets, capable of simulating environments governed by actual physics. He also announced Alpamayo, an AI model specifically designed for autonomous driving. Huang revealed that Nvidia’s next generation AI superchip platform, dubbed Vera Rubin, is in full production, and that Nvidia has a new partnership with Siemens. All of this shows Nvidia is going to fight increased competition to retain its reputation as the backbone of the AI industry.
But once Huang called for two little, waddling, chirping robots to join him on stage, that’s all the audience wanted to see more of.
The chips are back in town
AMD CEO Lisa Su announced a new line of its famed Ryzen AI processors as the company continues to expand its footprint in the world of AI-powered personal computers.
For gamers, AMD also showed off the latest version of its gaming-focused processor, the AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D.
Meanwhile, Intel announced its new AI chip for laptops, Panther Lake (also known as the Intel Core Ultra Series 3), and said the company has plans to launch a new platform to address a growing market for handheld video gaming machines.
Intel, a Silicon Valley pioneer that enjoyed decades of growth as its processors powered the personal computer boom, fell into a slump after missing the shift to the mobile computing era unleashed by the iPhone. It fell further behind after the AI boom propelled Nvidia into the spotlight.
President Donald Trump’s administration stepped in recently to secure a 10% stake in the company, making the government one of Intel’s biggest shareholders. Federal officials said they invested in Intel to support U.S. technology and domestic manufacturing.
Uber dives back into the robotaxi game
Uber is giving the public a first look at their robotaxi at this CES this week. Uber, along with luxury electric vehicle manufacturer Lucid Motors and vehicle tech company Nuro, introduced an autonomous vehicle with an Uber-designed in-cabin experience.
Uber calls it the most luxurious robotaxi yet. It features cameras, sensors and radars that provide 360-degree perception and a low-profile roof “halo” with integrated LEDs that will display riders’ initials to help them spot their car and track their ride status. Inside, riders can personalize everything from climate and seat heating to music, while real-time visuals show exactly what the vehicle is seeing on the road and the route it plans to take.
Autonomous on-road testing began last month in San Francisco, led by Nuro, marking a major step toward what the companies said is a planned launch before the end of the year.
Star Wars and Lego announce new a partnership
When Lucasfilm chief creative officer David Filoni brought out an array of X-Wing pilots, Chewbacca, R2D2 and C-3PO, he won the Star Wars fandom for Lego.
Lego announced its Lego Smart Play platform on Monday, which introduces new smart bricks, tags and special minifigs for your collection. The new bricks contain sensors that enable them to sense light and distance, and to provide an array of responses, essentially lights and sounds, when they are used in unison.
Combine this with a newly announced partnership with the Star Wars franchise and now you can create your own interactive space battles and light-saber duels.
LG reveals a new robot to help around the home
File this one under intrigued, for now.
The Korean tech giant gave the media a glimpse Monday of its humanoid robot that is designed to handle household chores such as folding laundry and fetching food. Although many companies have robots on display at CES, LG certainly is one of the biggest tech companies to promise to put a service robot in homes.
It will be on display — and we assume demonstrating some of its purported abilities — beginning Tuesday, so we’ll have more to report soon.
What’s new with lollipops?
Music you can taste was on display Monday at CES: Lollipop Star unveiled a candy that plays music while you eat it. The company says it uses something called “bone induction technology,” which lets you hear songs — like tracks from Ice Spice and Akon — through the lollipop as you lick it or bite it in the back of your mouth, according to spokesperson Cassie Lawrence.
The musical lollipops will go on sale after CES on Lollipop Star’s website for $8.99 each. And if that wasn’t enough star power, Akon was expected to visit the company’s booth Tuesday when CES opens to the public.
Atlas holds up Hyundai’s (manufacturing) world
Hyundai-owned Boston Dynamics publicly demonstrated its humanoid robot Atlas for the first time at the CES tech showcase, ratcheting up a competition with Tesla and other rivals to build robots that look like people and do things that people do.
The company said a version of the robot that will help assemble cars is already in production and will be deployed by 2028 at Hyundai’s electric vehicle manufacturing facility near Savannah, Georgia.
Delta gets spherical
Delta Air Lines is taking entertainment to new heights as the “official airline” of the Sphere in Las Vegas. The airline announced a new multiyear partnership with Sphere Entertainment Co. that it says will deliver premium experiences to the venue, including a Delta SKY360° Club lounge.
The carrier said SkyMiles members can unlock exclusive access to other experiences at the Sphere, starting during the final weekend of the Backstreet Boys’ residency in February with features including private suite seating, food and beverages. The partnership brings Delta branding to the Sphere’s massive exterior LED screen. Delta says more exclusive SkyMiles experiences will roll out in 2026 and beyond.
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Iran’s government has said its citizens will be given a monthly payment equivalent to about $7 to ease economic pressures as protests spread across the country, according to reports.
The announcement was reported to have been made on Monday by the government spokesperson, Fatemeh Mohajerani, on Iranian State TV.
She said the measure was aimed at “preserving households” purchasing power, controlling inflation and ensuring food security,” per The New York Times.
The outlet also said the plan represents a shift away from long-standing import subsidies toward direct assistance for citizens.
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A protester faces Iranian security forces during clashes amid nationwide unrest, according to images released by the Iranian opposition group National Council of Resistance of Iran. (NCRI )
Under the proposal, roughly $10 billion that had been spent each year to subsidize certain imports, will now be given directly to the public.
Eligible Iranians will get one million Iranian tomans, which is around $7, and in the form of credit that can be used to buy goods.
The labor minister said the payments would be handed out to about 80 million people, which is the majority of Iran’s population.
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Protesters march in downtown Tehran, Iran, Monday, Dec. 29, 2025. (Fars News Agency via AP)
Iran’s economy has been hit by sanctions and declining oil revenues which have led to protests.
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