Talks "are at a standstill" for Anthropic's potential $200 million contract with America's Defense Department, reports Reuters (citing several people familiar with the discussions.") The two issues?

- Using AI to surveil Americans
- Safeguards against deploying AI autonomously


The company's position on how its AI tools can be used has intensified disagreements between it and the Trump administration, the details of which have not been previously reported... Anthropic said its AI is "extensively used for national security missions by the U.S. government and we are in productive discussions with the Department of War about ways to continue that work..."

In an essay on his personal blog, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned this week that AI should support national defense "in all ways except those which would make us more like our autocratic adversaries.


A person "familiar with the matter" told the Wall Street Journal this could lead to the cancellation of Anthropic's contract:


Tensions with the administration began almost immediately after it was awarded, in part because Anthropic's terms and conditions dictate that Claude can't be used for any actions related to domestic surveillance. That limits how many law-enforcement agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Federal Bureau of Investigation could deploy it, people familiar with the matter said. Anthropic's focus on safe applications of AI — and its objection to having its technology used in autonomous lethal operations — have continued to cause problems, they said.



Amodei's essay calls for "courage, for enough people to buck the prevailing trends and stand on principle, even in the face of threats to their economic interests and personal safety..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Wall Street Journal says that Meta "might be reaping some of the richest benefits from the AI boom so far."





Meta's revenue grew 22% year over year in 2025 to $201 billion, and the company expects even bigger gains in the current quarter, potentially as high as 34%. That is huge growth for a company that brought in nearly $60 billion in the latest three-month period. And Zuckerberg signaled that Meta was just scratching the surface of AI's potential. "Our world-class recommendation systems are already driving meaningful growth across our apps and ads business. But we think that the current systems are primitive compared to what will be possible soon," he said on a call with investors and analysts...


[Meta's Chief Financial Officer Susan] Li said the company doubled the number of graphics-processing units that it used to train its ad-ranking model in the fourth quarter and adopted a new learning architecture. Those actions led users to click on ads on Facebook 3.5% more often and to a gain of more than 1% in conversions, meaning purchases, subscriptions or leads, on Instagram, she said. Other AI-related improvements led to a 3% increase in conversions across its family of apps. On the ad-buying side, Meta has also been working toward using AI to automate ad creation for businesses that want to advertise their products or services on Facebook and Instagram. On the call, Li said the combined revenue run rate of video-generation tools hit $10 billion in the fourth quarter.



In short, CNBC reported, Meta's stock price surged over 10% this week "after showing signs that AI investments are boosting the bottom line."

Benjamin Black, an internet analyst at Deutsche Bank, explained the connection to the Wall Street Journal. "The more compute the ad platform gets, the far better it performs, and that's a real structural advantage that Meta has. If you can see that yesterday's spend is driving this month's growth, then as a good business person, you're going to continue to feed the beast."

CNBC says now Meta "plans to spend between $115 billion and $135 billion on its AI build-out this year. That's nearly double what it spent in 2025."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Planned outages in force across Ukraine while Russian strike kills 12 miners hours after Zelenskyy says next trilateral talks to start on Wednesday. What we know on day 1,440

A Russian drone strike on a bus carrying miners killed at least 12 people, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday, hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced new peace talks amid uncertainty over a Russian suspension of attacks on energy infrastructure. First deputy prime minister Denys Shmyhal said the strike in the south-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region was a “cynical and targeted” attack on energy workers. The bus was driving about 65km (40 miles) from the frontline, police said.

A second round of talks between Russian, Ukrainian and US officials on a US-drafted plan to end the war did not go ahead on Sunday in Abu Dhabi as scheduled and Zelenskyy said it would instead take place this Wednesday and Thursday. Ukraine was ready for “substantive” talks, he said. He did not give a reason for the delay, and neither Moscow nor the US confirmed the new dates. Russia has continued attacking Ukraine throughout the negotiating process.

An earlier drone attack in the region overnight killed a man and a woman in the central city of Dnipro, regional military administration head Oleksandr Ganzha said in a post on Telegram. A drone also struck a maternity hospital in the southern Zaporizhzhia region on Sunday, wounding at least seven people including two women receiving a medical examination.

The Kremlin said on Friday it had agreed to halt strikes on energy infrastructure until Sunday at the request of Donald Trump, and Kyiv said it would reciprocate. Ukraine said the suspension was supposed to last until the following Friday. The countries have not reported major strikes on their energy systems in recent days, though Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Russia was attacking railway infrastructure and other logistics. He also said its forces had attacked the power grid in two cities across the Dnipro river from the front line, but did not explicitly accuse Russia of breaking the energy ceasefire.

Ukraine faced a new cold snap on Sunday with temperatures hovering around minus 15C (5F) and expected to drop even further on Monday to well below -20C in Kyiv. Grid operator Ukrenergo said late on Saturday that planned outages would be in force throughout the entire country.

Ukraine’s defence minister thanked Elon Musk after the world’s richest person said efforts to stop Russia from using Starlink satellites for drone attacks seemed to have worked. “The first steps are already delivering real results ... Thank you for standing with us,” defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov said on Sunday. “You are a true champion of freedom and a true friend of the Ukrainian people.”

Russian forces gained control over the village of Zelene in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and the settlement of Sukhetske in the Donetsk region, the Russian defence ministry said on Sunday. The Russian state Tass news agency also quoted it as saying Russian forces hit facilities of transport infrastructure used in the interests of the Ukrainian army.

Tens of thousands of Czechs rallied in Prague on Sunday to support the country’s pro-Ukrainian president, who is locked in a dispute with the government’s nationalist billionaire leader Andrej Babis. Organisers from the independent Million Moments for Democracy movement claim up to 90,000 people attended the demonstration, where some participants waved Czech, European and Ukrainian flags.

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Musicians stepped out in ruffles, lace and trains – and the red carpet saw the return of the free the nipple movement

• The winners, the losers, the performances – live

• List of winners

• Nominations in major categories

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Tonight has already seen wins for Lady Gaga and Bad Bunny with major performances and big awards still to come

• Grammy awards 2026: list of winners

• Grammy awards 2026: nominations in major categories
  

There have already been some celebrities speaking out against ICE on the red carpet as well as a smattering of pins following on from similar activity on the Golden Globes red carpet.

Billie Eilish, Justin Bieber, Justin Vernon, Jason Isbell, Rhiannon Giddens and Margo Price were all wearing some form of protest wear and Kehlani also spoke about her feelings in an interview.

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DC arts venue, which has seen wave of canceled events after Trump’s takeover, will start renovations in July

The John F Kennedy Center, a world-class venue for the performing arts in Washington DC, will halt entertainment events for two years starting on 4 July during renovations, Donald Trump posted on Sunday on Truth Social.

The Kennedy Center, which has seen a wave of performers cancel events in recent months as well as the lowest ticket sales in years, has been in turmoil since the president orchestrated a leadership overhaul in the beginning of his term.

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PLUS: NTT offshores to Vietnam; Japan adds AI interface to space data; Samsung cashes in on memory boom

Asia In Brief  India wants to offer big tech companies tax breaks that last decades.…

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As seen from Shoalwater, with Bird Island between.