The Algorithm Age

The US Congress has passed President Donald Trump's huge tax breaks and spending cuts bill, bringing an end to days of debate and overnight voting in the Capitol. House Republicans propelled the $4.5 trillion (€3.8 trillion) One Big Beautiful Bill Act to final congressional passage on Thursday, overcoming multiple setbacks to approve Trump's signature second-term policy package before a 4 July deadline. The tight roll call, 218-214, came at a potentially high political cost, with two Republicans joining all Democrats opposed. GOP leaders worked overnight and the president himself leaned on a handful of sceptics to drop their opposition and send the bill to him to sign into law. Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York delayed voting by holding the floor for more than eight hours with a record-breaking speech against the bill. "We have a big job to finish," said House Speaker Mike Johnson. "With one big bea...

A decade ago, Donald Trump descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower in New York City and ignited a political movement that has reshaped American politics . In a memorable turn of phrase, Trump promised supporters of his 2016 presidential campaign that “we are going to make our country great again.” Since then, the Make America Great Again movement has dominated the U.S. political conversation, reshaped the Republican Party and become a lucrative brand adorning hats, T-shirts and bumper stickers. When asked what MAGA means to him, Trump, in a 2017 interview with The Washington Post said, “To me, it meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant military strength. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant so much.” But Democratic leaders have a different interpretation of the slogan. Former President Bill Clinton in 2016 said of MAGA: “That message where ‘I’ll give you America great again’ is if you’re a white Southerner, you know exactly what it means, d...

Whitehouse, in an exclusive interview with Global South World, warned that African youth, particularly English-speaking job seekers, are being increasingly targeted by traffickers linked to scam compounds. He revealed that his long-standing engagement with Cambodia began over a decade ago through his collaboration with exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy. “I helped him to write his English-language autobiography, which was published in 2013,” Whitehouse said. “Sam Rainsy is a former finance minister of Cambodia in the 1990s." Whitehouse, now a freelance journalist with a special focus on Southeast Asia, believes Cambodia’s cybercrime industry represents a new phase of long-standing state corruption. “Back in the 1990s, corruption took the form primarily of illegal logging,” he says. “These days, it’s more about cyber scams being more profitable and far less labour-intensive, which, it's fair to say, make money much faster, in much larger quantities,” he noted. ...

The General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE) responded with an angry statement to the Labour Ministry’s intention to extend working hours to up to 13 per day for the same employer. Worker representatives argue that the Greek government is attempting to solidify a practice that will physically and mentally exhaust employees, without actually improving the productivity of the Greek economy. "The further deregulation of the labour framework and the shift of responsibility for managing working and leisure time to individual negotiation — where the employer-employee relationship is imbalanced — essentially undermines any effort to restore a framework of free collective bargaining," said the GSEE’s statement. It continued: "The duration of working time, rest periods, and vacation for workers cannot be regulated by government intervention, but only through social dialogue, through collective bargaining." The group spoke of “an attempt to dismantle colle...

Ministers are racing to close gaps in Australia's child safety laws that have been left open for years, in the wake of another shocking case of alleged child abuse at a centre in Victoria. State and territory governments have responsibility for child protection and enforcement in childcare centres — but it is the Commonwealth that funds providers. That tension is again in question after a 26-year-old man was charged with dozens of child abuse offences at the Creative Garden Early Learning Centre in Point Cook. It has reopened questions about gaps in Australia's laws, including how unsafe centres continue to receive funding, around how safety standards are enforced and around the systems monitoring workers — which remain a patchwork of rules a decade on from recommendations for reform. Education Minister Jason Clare has reaffirmed that the government is urgently progressing laws it announced in March to strip funding from childcare providers who rep...

The decision by three Republican senators to vote "no" on the megabill on its way back to the House before Donald Trump can sign it set off a mass outpouring of anger Tuesday afternoon on his Truth Social platform. Moments after the bill passed with Vice President JDVance's tie-breaker vote, GOP Sens. Thom Tillis (NC), Susan Collins (ME) and Rand Paul (KY) became enemies of the state in the eyes of the MAGA faithful, with one Trump fan calling them "insurrectionists." With a flood of complaints that the three are "Republicans in name only," or RINOs, commenter Monk lumped in Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) , who later admitted she would like to see the bill fail as it is written once it is returned to the House. Want more breaking political news? Click for the latest headlines at Raw Story. "Now, primary Collins, Murkowski and Rand Paul!. America is sick of these RINO’s ," he wrote. Rugmakr added, "Yes indeed, ...

Victoria’s new chief police commissioner describes himself as a “good listener” and an agent for cultural change within the police force, while former New Zealand police minister Stuart Nash reckons the new appointee is a “hard bastard”. Mike Bush, who served as police commissioner in New Zealand from 2014 until 2020, will need those qualities and more when he becomes Victoria’s highest-ranking officer next month. Lured out of retirement after an approach by the Allan government, Bush will be confronted by soaring crime rates and a tobacco war, recruitment and retention problems, budgetary constraints and a slump in morale among frontline officers. The forthright New Zealander also faces intense pressure to maintain independence from the state government, which will be desperate for any positive spin on law-and-order issues in the lead-up to next year’s election. However, Bush seemed undaunted when his appointment was announced on Tuesday by Police M...

New South Wales' early childhood sector will be a subject to a number of "nation-leading" reforms, the state government has announced, following the findings of an independent review into the sector regarding a rise in safety breaches. As announced by the Minns government on Thursday, these reforms will be centred around transparency and improving child safety. These planned changes include childcare providers being required to notify families if they are being investigated for serious breaches, a mandate for service quality and safety performance information to be appropriately published, as well as legislative changes to increase penalties over breaches to national regulations. But the government's plan is to also establish a state-based early childhood regulator, independent from the federal Department of Education, that will report directly to the NSW minister of education and have "stronger powers and accountability". ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Legislation introduced Wednesday in Congress would block Chinese artificial intelligence systems from federal agencies as a bipartisan group of lawmakers pledged to ensure that the United States would prevail against China in the global competition over AI. “We are in a new Cold War, and AI is the strategic technology at the center,” said Republican Rep. John Moolenaar of Michigan, chairman of the House Select Committee on China, as he opened a hearing on the matter. “The future balance of power may very well be determined by who leads in AI.” About five months ago, a Chinese technology startup called DeepSeek introduced an AI model that rivaled platforms from OpenAI and Google in performance, but cost only a fraction to build. This raised concerns that China was catching up to U.S. despite restrictions on chips and other key technologies used to develop AI. That race is now a central part of the U.S.-China rivalry, and so much is at stake that the...

Buried among the 1,116 pages of the " One Big Beautiful Bill " President Donald Trump wants the Republican-controlled Congress to approve in order to advance his agenda is that rarest of policy proposals pushed by Trump: an idea high-profile South Carolina GOP officials oppose. It's a credit to them that they did their research and are pushing back on part of Trump's signature initiative. There is more to criticize in the bill, including the way it would increase the federal deficit by $2.8 trillion over the next decade, but that's a discussion for another day. Today, let's focus on whether states should be able to regulate artificial intelligence. Spoiler alert: They should. Don't just take it from me. Take it from South Carolina's attorney general and Senate president, who have been at the forefront of growing bipartisan opposition to what would be a massive change, a national embrace with few protections of a field evolving too fa...

There was little cause for delight among Treasurer Daniel Mookhey's budget revelations. No exciting promises about shiny new metros. No new handouts to ease the pressure on household budgets. No credible path to achieving housing targets in New South Wales, although a $1 billion fund to improve supply will provide a welcome boost. The government is stabilising debt and forecasting a surplus in 2027/28, the first in almost a decade. But that won't exactly thrill voters. Ahead of every budget, treasurers are inundated with worthy funding requests and often those with the loudest voices win. So, it's significant that this time around, the government is helping those who can't speak up for themselves — the state's most vulnerable children. Fixing a system in crisis The NSW out-of-home care system is the biggest in the southern hemisphere, according to the government, with 14,000 children in the care of the state. ...

The federal education minister has referred concerns about the Australian National University in Canberra to the country's tertiary education regulator. Independent ACT senator David Pocock wrote to the minister, Jason Clare, on June 16 to raise concerns about governance and financial management at the ANU, which is pursuing a controversial restructure to save $250 million by 2026. There has been widespread staff and community outcry over the university's ongoing plans to slash hundreds of jobs, after it revealed a cumulative deficit of around $600 million. Senator Pocock's letter, which also includes other unspecified serious allegations, has now been referred to the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), which regulates higher education. Mr Clare said he had also written to ANU Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell on June 6 after hearing of "significant concerns" from his ACT Labor colleagues and the broader community ab...