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Thieves stage daring daytime jewel heist at Louvre

admin - Latest News - October 20, 2025
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Armed with power tools and a plan straight out of a heist movie, three or four thieves broke into the Louvre on Sunday and made off with royal jewels once worn by France’s queens and empresses, officials told NBC News. NBC News’ Molly Hunter reports from Paris.



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Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleOct. 4, 2025, 7:30 AM EDTBy Steve KopackThe humble soybean is the latest flashpoint in the Trump administration’s campaign to reshape global trade.Used in everything from animal feed to fuel, soybeans regularly rank among the most valuable U.S. agricultural exports, towering over higher-profile crops like corn and cotton. More than $30 billion worth of American soybean products were exported in fiscal year 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.For American soybean farmers, their top overseas market has long been China, which bought around a third of the export crop — approximately $12 billion worth of American soybean products — in the last calendar year, USDA data shows.But not anymore.As President Donald Trump’s trade war leaves U.S.-China relations somewhere between frosty and openly hostile, America’s soybean farmers appear to be an early casualty.An embargo in all but nameSo far, China has not purchased any U.S. soybeans during this year’s main harvest period, with sales falling to zero in May. This has pushed many American farmers reliant on soybeans nearly to the breaking point. It has also complicated the Trump administration’s plans to provide billions in foreign economic aid to Argentina. Buenos Aires recently sold more than 2.5 million metric tons of soybeans to Beijing, after briefly suspending its export tax on the soy products. Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Tuesday.Greg Baker / AFP – Getty ImagesU.S. officials blame China for the looming crisis facing American soybean producers. “It’s unfortunate the Chinese leadership has decided to use the American farmers, soybean farmers in particular, as a hostage or pawn in the trade negotiations,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday on CNBC.Farmers view the situation differently, however. They want Trump to reach a trade deal with China that ends the unofficial embargo on soybeans. But instead, what they see is the White House preparing to bail out one of their chief rivals for the Chinese export market.“The frustration is overwhelming,” American Soybean Association President Caleb Ragland said in a recent statement.Meanwhile, China — the world’s biggest buyer of soybeans —indicated last week that it won’t resume U.S. purchases unless more Trump tariffs are lifted. “As for soybean trade, the U.S. side should take proactive steps to remove relevant unreasonable tariffs, create conditions for expanding bilateral trade, and inject more stability and certainty into global economic development,” Commerce Ministry spokesperson He Yadong told reporters in Beijing.Emergency relief is comingThe Trump administration will announce new support for farmers, “especially the soybean farmers,” on Tuesday, Bessent said.“We’re also going to be working with the Farm Credit Bureau to make sure that the farmers have what they need for the next planting season,” he added.Bessent personally owns as much as $25 million worth of farmland in North Dakota that produces corn and soybeans, according to his recent financial disclosures.He said soybeans would be a topic of discussion at the upcoming meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum later this month.Mark German loading soybeans into a truck in Dwight, Ill., in August.Scott Olson / Getty Images fileTrump is also aware of the impact his trade policies are having on American farmers, starting with soybean growers.“The Soybean Farmers of our Country are being hurt because China is, for ‘negotiating’ reasons only, not buying,” the president posted Wednesday on Truth Social.“We’ve made so much money on Tariffs, that we are going to take a small portion of that money, and help our Farmers,” Trump added.The question is whether this aid will come soon enough to save this year’s massive harvest of soybeans.At the center of the firestorm is Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who warned this week that “this moment of uncertainty in the farm economy is real.” Speaking on Fox Business Network, she emphasized that Trump has long supported U.S. farmers.Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins outside the White House on Tuesday.Aaron Schwartz / Sipa USA via AP“President Trump and Secretary Rollins are always in touch about the needs of our farmers, who played a crucial role in the President’s November victory,” the White House said in a statement Thursday. “He has made clear his intention to use tariff revenue to help our agricultural sector, but no final decisions on the contours of this plan have been made.”The Argentina factorThe current U.S.-China stalemate over soybean exports is also complicating another American foreign policy conundrum: what to do about Argentina’s faltering economy.As U.S. soybean exports to China screech to a halt, Argentina’s farmers jumped at the opportunity to sell China their own soybeans. From their perspective, a potential U.S. economic aid package has nothing to do with their soybean exports, and everything to do with the personal and political alliance between Trump and libertarian President Javier Milei. Milei was the first foreign leader to visit Trump after his 2024 election victory, and he has become a familiar face at U.S. political events attended by the president’s MAGA supporters.At a Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, D.C. in February, Milei gifted then-Department of Government Efficiency chief Elon Musk a red chainsaw. Musk then waved it around onstage, calling it “the chainsaw for bureaucracy.” Elon Musk holding a chainsaw onstage at a CPAC conference in Oxon Hill, Md., in February.Andrew Harnik / Getty ImagesEight months later, Milei’s popularity with voters has plunged, raising doubts about the future of his market-friendly economic reforms and strict austerity measures.Local elections in early September dealt a blow to Milei’s party, triggering massive turmoil in Argentina’s stock and currency markets. A few weeks after the market plunge, Bessent announced on social media that the U.S. was prepared to deploy billions of dollars to support the South American country.A presidential delegation from Buenos Aires is expected to visit the White House next week to finalize the U.S. foreign aid deal.This has infuriated the soybean farmers. “U.S. soybean prices are falling, harvest is underway, and farmers read headlines not about securing a trade agreement with China, but that the U.S. government is extending $20 billion in economic support to Argentina while that country drops its soybean export taxes to sell 20 shiploads of Argentine soybeans to China in just two days,” Ragland said.President-elect Donald Trump with Argentine President Javier Milei at the America First Policy Institute gala at Mar-a-Lago in November.Carlos Barria / Reuters fileMeanwhile, Milei has also secured a currency swap line for Argentina from China, a situation that gives pause to some in Washington. In response, Milei has said Argentina will maintain its mutually beneficial trade and economic relationship with China. Tensions inside the Trump administration over China, Argentina and the soybean farmers broke into the open last week.While attending the U.N. General Assembly, Bessent received a text message from a contact labeled “BR.”“We bailed out Argentina yesterday … and in return, the Argentine’s removed their export tariff on grains, reducing their price, and sold a bunch of soybeans to China at a time when we would normally be selling to China,” read the message, widely presumed to come from Rollins.“Soy prices are dropping further because of it. This gives China more leverage on us,” the message concluded.Spokespeople for Bessent and Rollins did not respond to questions about the text message exchange.
November 19, 2025
Nov. 18, 2025, 2:45 PM ESTBy Jared PerloThe robot warriors are coming, and so are the zillionaires, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., warned in a wide-ranging interview with NBC News on the rise and risks of artificial intelligence.“I think we are not all that far away from the development of robotic soldiers,” Sanders said Sunday. “Right now, politicians — at least sometimes — have to worry about loss of life when they decide to go to war. If you don’t have to worry about loss of life, and what you worry about is loss of robots, what does that mean for issues of war and peace globally? It’s a big issue.” Sanders is known for his focus on the millionaires and billionaires of the world, and how the U.S. government might favor them. In recent months, he’s turned his attention to AI, which he says is an extension of his primary concerns about wealth inequality.“Today, before we have seen the full implications of robotics and AI, you’re looking at unprecedented wealth and income concentration,” Sanders said. “The top 1% of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 93%,” he said. “All of these zillionaires — the Musks, the Ellisons, the Bezoses, the Zuckerbergs — are investing hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars into AI and robotics. What is the result of all that?”Elon Musk, the CEO of xAI, was just approved to receive a pay package from one of his other companies, Tesla, that could make him the world’s first trillionaire. “It will mean even more wealth and even more political power for these guys at the top, while our democracy gets weaker and weaker. Working people will see a significant decline in their standard of living unless we turn this around.”Sanders’ focus on AI comes as tech companies have announced historic AI investments and sought to secure goodwill from President Donald Trump. The Trump administration has prioritized ensuring America’s AI ecosystem is “unencumbered by bureaucratic red tape” to avoid an “onerous regulatory regime,” while also keeping many aspects of the Biden administration’s AI efforts.Sanders is not the only elected official bringing attention to the issue, with rising interest in AI legislation at both the state and the federal levels. On Tuesday, a House subcommittee met to discuss the safety of AI chatbots.In the interview with NBC News, Sanders said he sees the issue as an urgent matter and hopes to provoke more discussion about AI and its potential impacts on society: “The folks who have studied this moment are suggesting this ain’t just another technological revolution. It is a lot more profound, and it’s going to move a lot quicker.”With such a fast-moving and general purpose technology as AI, Sanders sees threats not only to workers, but also to larger notions of humanity. “People are worried that right now, many young people, teenagers, are relying on companionship from AI rather than fellow human beings,” Sanders said. “If kids today have AI as their best friends, as the ‘people’ they relate to, where they spend most of their time rather than other human beings, what kind of change does that mean for humanity?”“We’re talking about incredibly deep, deep issues of what it means to be human,” Sanders concluded. “This issue needs enormous discussion, and I hope we can provoke some of it.”Sanders will hold a town hall with “Godfather of AI” and Nobel Laureate Geoffrey Hinton on Tuesday night at Georgetown University to discuss AI’s trajectory, including its effect on workers. “People who know a lot more than I do about this, people like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Dario Amodei, they are talking about massive, massive job dislocation,” Sanders said. “Musk recently said that ‘AI and robots will replace all jobs. Working will be optional.’”“But what the hell does that mean if it’s going to replace all jobs? If I’m a factory worker today, if I’m working in an office, how am I going to feed my family? How am I going to pay the rent? Who is talking about that?” Sanders added, also referencing recent claims from Anthropic CEO Amodei that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and increase unemployment by up to 20% in the next one to five years. “There has been far, far, far too little discussion among the American people, in the media and certainly in Congress about the implications of AI and robotics.”In October, Sanders released a report on AI and led a hearing on AI’s potential to support American workers and families. He’s also proposed a limited set of policies that he says could help address some issues posed by AI, including increased employee ownership of companies, a reduced workweek and even a potential robot tax on large corporations, using “the revenue to improve the lives of workers who have been harmed.”Sanders has also proposed that leading American AI company OpenAI should be broken up given its size. In his interview with NBC News, he said his call “was more general” than just OpenAI and meant to implicate several of America’s largest AI companies.“When I talk about breaking these [companies] up, I mean creating a situation where this new technology is designed to benefit ordinary people, not just designed by a handful of billionaires to make them even richer,” he said.“I don’t have a blueprint in my back pocket here, because nobody has ever had to deal with this reality, but the idea that a handful of multibillionaires can determine the future of humanity seems a little bit crazy to me.”Sanders is also criticizing growing efforts by American venture capitalists and deep-pocketed donors to create super PACs designed to lobby against AI regulation. “You’ve got people who are suggesting that it’s almost anti-religious, the Antichrist, to be demanding regulation of AI and robotics right now,” he said, obliquely referencing recent speeches by Silicon Valley stalwart Peter Thiel. In one of these lectures, Thiel said: “In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science.” “It almost takes you back to the 1700s and the monarchies throughout Europe,” Sanders said. “Some of these Big Tech guys think that they have a God-given right to rule the world, and the idea that a Congress or ordinary citizens might object to what they are doing, they see as something that is unacceptable.”“So they will put unlimited amounts of money into super PACs to elect candidates who will allow them to do whatever they want. It’s very dangerous.”Asked about increasing cooperation between leading American AI companies and the U.S. military, Sanders highlighted growing concerns about privacy. “How far away are we from a small number of people having access to the email that you’ve sent out, every phone call that you’ve been on, really every aspect of your life? We’re not far.”“Either we’re there right now or we certainly assume we’ll be there. That gives the people on top extraordinary control when they have that knowledge,” he said.Sanders joins a growing and bipartisan group of national politicians focusing on AI. Some, like Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., have targeted the societal impacts of AI. Hawley has recently proposed several AI-related bills, including an effort to limit minors’ access to chatbots, a push to better track AI-related layoffs and a mechanism to evaluate AI models’ abilities. Others, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Jim Banks, R-Ind., have proposed bills targeting the export of American AI technology and hardware to China. For his part, Sanders is hoping his voice can help advance the conversation. “I see growing awareness, but I don’t think Congress is moving anywhere near fast enough,” he said. Jared PerloJared Perlo is a writer and reporter at NBC News covering AI. He is currently supported by the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism.
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