Trump proposes $5B fund to rebuild Middle East energy infrastructure
British Columbia filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Chief Executive Sam Altman on Monday, alleging safety violations connected to the Tumbler Ridge mass school shooting that devastated a rural town in the Canadian province. The Wall Street Journal’s Morning Risk Report described the suit as opening a new front in the growing fight against artificial-intelligence companies.
The lawsuit claims OpenAI designed an unsafe product and accuses the company of negligence for failing to flag the shooting suspect’s ChatGPT activity to police. Employees of OpenAI raised alarms about the suspect’s chatbot use months before the massacre, which killed eight people and injured more than 25, the Journal previously reported.
The same newsletter also reported that the Trump administration has proposed investing $5 billion in a new fund to help Middle East countries rebuild energy infrastructure battered in the Iran war and reduce their reliance on the Strait of Hormuz to transport oil and gas, according to U.S. and Middle Eastern officials and documents seen by the Journal. The proposal is a tacit acknowledgment that the seven-month conflict has roiled the global energy market and destroyed regional pipelines and refineries that will be costly to rebuild.
Ireland’s data protection watchdog fined Alphabet’s Google 403 million euros ($462.9 million) on Monday, saying the company breached European Union privacy rules over its handling of users’ location data following a 2020 investigation.
“As a result of Google’s failures in this regard, individuals could have been unaware that their location was being used to, for example, influence them with ads or to infer their interests, and could lose control over their personal data,” Graham Doyle, the DPC’s deputy commissioner, said in a statement.
Scores of executives across industries are flocking to New York City this week to tout how they’re lowering their emissions, Risk Journal’s Clara Hudson reported. But the task will be tricky as businesses invest heavily in power-hungry and carbon-intensive artificial intelligence that has stirred public opposition, while President Trump says building out data centers quickly is a national security priority.
At Climate Week, dozens of events center on blunting the energy demands of data centers — a lightning rod that has galvanized local communities and lawmakers across the country.
Former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, calling on the Trump administration to pause diesel exports in an effort to lower prices as he runs for a Senate seat in Michigan, said: “The war in Iran needs to end to bring costs down—but Michigan families can’t afford to wait.”
Separately, the Morning Risk Report summarized a settlement Paramount reached with state attorneys general that includes a host of concessions and investments in the U.S. entertainment industry, clearing the way for its hard-fought $81 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. The settlement stops short of forcing Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison to make significant structural changes to the company, but includes penalties such as the forced sale of cable channels and Paramount’s stake in Miramax if it doesn’t make good on its promises. That settlement was reported in greater depth in a prior Main Street Independent article.