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The brief but consequential provision, tucked into the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s sweeping markup, would be a major boon to the AI industry, which has lobbied for uniform and light touch regulation as tech firms develop a technology they promise will transform society.

However, while the clause would be far-reaching if enacted, it faces long odds in the U.S. Senate, where procedural rules may doom its inclusion in the GOP legislation.

“I don’t know whether it will pass the Byrd Rule,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, referring to a provision that requires that all parts of a budget reconciliation bill, like the GOP plan, focus mainly on the budgetary matters rather than general policy aims.

The unsigned blog post on Microsoft’s corporate website appears to be the company’s first public acknowledgement of its deep involvement in the war, which started after Hamas killed about 1,200 people in Israel and has led to the deaths of tens of thousands in Gaza.

It comes nearly three months after an investigation by The Associated Press revealed previously unreported details about the American tech giant’s close partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Defense, with military use of commercial AI products skyrocketing by nearly 200 times after the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. The AP reported that the Israeli military uses Azure to transcribe, translate and process intelligence gathered through mass surveillance, which can then be cross-checked with Israel’s in-house AI-enabled targeting systems and vice versa.

The hard-right lawmakers are insisting on steeper spending cuts to Medicaid and the Biden-era green energy tax breaks, among other changes, before they will give their support to President Donald Trump’s “beautiful” bill. They warn the tax cuts alone would pile onto the nation’s $36 trillion debt.

The failed vote, 16-21, stalls, for now, House Speaker Mike Johnson’s push to have the package approved next week. But the Budget Committee plans to reconvene Sunday to try again. Lawmakers vowed to negotiate into the weekend as Trump is returning to Washington from the Middle East.

“Something needs to change or you’re not going to get my support,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas.

A group representing major foreign streaming companies told a hearing held by Canada's broadcasting regulator on Friday that those companies shouldn't be expected to fulfil the same responsibilities as traditional broadcasters when it comes to Canadian content.

The Motion Picture Association-Canada, which represents large streamers like Netflix, Paramount, Disney and Amazon, said the regulator should be flexible in modernizing its definition of Canadian content.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is holding a two-week public hearing on a new definition of Canadian content that began Wednesday. The proceeding is part of its work to implement the Online Streaming Act — and it is bringing tensions between traditional players and large foreign streamers out in the open.

China has emerged as the top customer for Canadian oil shipped on the expanded Trans Mountain Pipeline, ship tracking data shows, as a U.S. trade war has shifted crude flows in the year since the pipeline started operating.

China's new interest in Canadian oil comes as U.S. President Donald Trump's trade war has strained relations between longtime allies Washington and Ottawa. It also reflects the impact of U.S. sanctions on crude from countries like Russia and Venezuela.

Canada is the world's fourth-largest oil producer, but its main oil-producing province of Alberta is landlocked with limited access to tidewater ports. That means the bulk of Canadian oil — about four million barrels per day or 90 per cent — is exported to the U.S. via pipelines that run north-south.

A B.C. ostrich farm fighting an order to kill its 400 birds has become a flashpoint for the far right and people skeptical of both mainstream science and the regulatory powers of governments.

A volunteer researcher with a grassroots group called Unmask the Right says he’s concerned about the involvement of high-profile convoy protesters and people who have threatened violence. Even U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has attacked the cull.

The researcher sent The Tyee a Facebook post by James Sowery, an Alberta man convicted of assault with a weapon related to his actions at the Coutts border protest in 2022, when he drove his truck at an RCMP officer.

In response to Sowery’s AI-generated picture of an army-helmeted ostrich with the tag line “Save our ostriches,” B.C. commenters have called a federal judge “evil” for ruling Tuesday that the CFIA’s cull of the ostrich flock could go ahead. One called for “the gallows” to be brought back so people could watch the government officials who made the decision “draw their last breaths.”

Benn was fined $5,000, the maximum allowable under the CBA, for roughing Scheifele in Game 5 of their second-round series on Thursday night, the NHL's Department of Player Safety announced Friday.

Last November, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner issued a characteristically blunt warning to anyone hatching plans to “play militia,” threaten voters, or otherwise interfere in the upcoming election: “F around and find out.”

“You can have your fun in a jail cell, ’cause that’s what’s coming,” he said in a press conference that went viral on social media. The next day, Krasner downplayed it—“to everyone’s surprise, [I’m] getting a lot of attention”—but displayed a T-shirt that staff members had printed with an acronym: FAFO.

Krasner used to say he’d retire after his tenure as district attorney, but now, he’s not so sure. “I don’t have any plans,” Krasner told me. “But I do get a little irritated when elected officials in higher office open their mouths, and I hear clucking coming out.”

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, in a statement on Thursday, said at least 40 Rohingya refugees were detained in New Delhi and cast into the sea by the Indian navy near the maritime border with Myanmar. The refugees — including children, women and older people — swam ashore, but their whereabouts in Myanmar remain unknown, the agency said.

Five Rohingya refugees on Friday confirmed to the Associated Press that their family members were part of the group that were detained by Indian authorities on May 6. The group, including 15 Christians, were flown in an aircraft and later cast into the sea by Indian navy authorities on May 8, they said.

Dilawar Hussain, a lawyer representing the refugees, said the families have filed a petition in India’s top court, urging the Indian government to bring them back to New Delhi.

When Haitham Abu Daqa’s 5-month-old daughter developed a heart problem that could not be addressed near their home in Gaza, the family sought medical help in Jordan, where she underwent successful open-heart surgery.

After the surgery, Daqa’s wife, who was with their daughter, pleaded with Jordanian officials to be allowed to stay. She feared that little Nevine’s recovery would be at risk in the war-ravaged Palestinian enclave that has few functioning medical facilities. But the officials insisted that the family had to go home.

“How can I take care of the girl while I am living in a tent, and at the same time, the bombing doesn’t stop,” Daqa said, sobbing. “How dare they send her back? If there is treatment in Gaza for her case, why did they take her in the first place?”

Under the dappled light of a thatched shelter, Yagana Bulama cradles her surviving infant. The other twin is gone, a casualty of malnutrition and the international funding cuts that are snapping the lifeline for displaced communities in Nigeria’s insurgency-ravaged Borno state.

“Feeding is severely difficult,” said Bulama, 40, who was a farmer before Boko Haram militants swept through her village, forcing her to flee. She and about 400,000 other people at the humanitarian hub of Dikwa — virtually the entire population — rely on assistance. The military restricts their movements to a designated “safe zone,” which severely limits farming.

For years, the United States Agency for International Development had been the backbone of the humanitarian response in northeastern Nigeria, helping non-government organizations provide food, shelter and healthcare to millions of people. But this year, the Trump administration cut more than 90% of USAID’s foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in overall assistance around the world.

Midway while sailing across the Pacific with just his cat named Phoenix, Oliver Widger reflected on why he thinks his many followers — more than a million on TikTok and Instagram — are drawn to his story of quitting his 9-to-5 job and embarking on a journey from Oregon to Hawaii.

“The world kind of sucks and, like, I don’t think I’m alone in how I felt with my work,” Widger, 29, told The Associated Press on Wednesday via Zoom. “You can be making $150,000 a year and you still feel like you’re just making ends meet, you know what I mean? And I think people are just tired of that and working really hard for nothing and want a way out.”

He abruptly quit his job with “no money, no plan” and $10,000 of debt.

He liquidated his retirement savings, taught himself to sail mostly via YouTube and moved from Portland to the Oregon coast, where he spent months refitting the $50,000 boat he bought.