The Center Party officially backed President Alar Karis for a second term on Saturday but also called for direct elections where the head of state is chosen by the people, not the Riigikogu.

The Complaints Choir project is back in Estonia, debuting a seven-minute collaborative lament led by alternative artist Florian Wahl at Tallinn's Balti jaama turg on Friday.

The Center Party officially backed President Alar Karis for a second term on Saturday but also called for direct elections where the head of state is chosen by the people, not the Riigikogu.

Eesti 200 leader Kristina Kallas said that the party does not agree with the governing coalition backing away from the goal of making family benefits means-tested and thereby saving €100 million annually.

The Complaints Choir project is back in Estonia, debuting a seven-minute collaborative lament led by alternative artist Florian Wahl at Tallinn's Balti jaama turg on Friday.

Police say most stolen bicycles in Estonia are quickly resold, often online or through pawn shops, making them difficult to trace and leaving little chance of recovery.

Austraalia alustas jalgpalli MMi vägevalt, alistades D-alagrupi kohtumises Türgi 2:0. Postimees vahendas mängu otseblogis.

Tänapäeval tundub lindude ränne iseenesestmõistetav, kuid veel mõnisada aastat tagasi pakkusid teadlased välja märksa kummalisemaid teooriaid. Mõned uskusid, et linnud veedavad talve järvede põhjas, teised aga arvasid, et nende sihtpunktiks on koguni Kuu. Seejärel ilmus Saksamaal välja toonekurg, kelle kaelas olnud ese pani paljud senised oletused uude valgusesse. Üksainus lind pakkus rohkem tõendusmaterjali kui aastakümnete jagu vaidlusi. Kuidas see juhtus?

The right-wing Swiss People's Party calls the plan a "sustainability initiative", but opponents say it is a recipe for chaos.

Marius Borg Høiby will appear via video link, almost three months after his trial came to an end on 40 charges, including four counts of rape.

Why has the American economy continued to outperform so many of its peers, despite facing the same global shocks?

Musk is now worth $1.11tn according to the Bloomberg rich list, while SpaceX listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange with a value of $2.2tn.

The Trump administration’s decision to impose sweeping export controls on Anthropic followed a frantic 24-hour effort by senior officials to convince the company to voluntarily pull a newly released artificial intelligence model that officials believed posed security risks, according to two administration officials and a senior White House official, who like others in this story were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the episode. The move, which followed multiple tense calls between Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and White House Cyber Director Sean Cairncross, underscores how the White House is wrestling in real-time with regulating fast-moving and potentially dangerous AI models. The details of the calls have not been previously reported. The administration’s imposition of export controls forced Anthropic to pull its new AI model, Fable, just days after it was released to the public. Anthropic had given assurances that it was safe but soon after its release, top administration officials developed fresh doubts that the AI’s guardrails were as secure as the company had suggested. On Thursday, two days after the model’s public release, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy raised concerns to the White House about the ability to bypass the model’s guardrails, according to the two administration officials and the senior White House official. (Amazon, which is an investor in Anthropic, was responding to an administration request for feedback, said a person familiar with Amazon’s discussions.) By Friday morning, the issue had reached the highest levels of the White House. Bessent, Cairncross, chief of staff Susie Wiles and other senior officials met to discuss the model and the administration’s response, according to the administration official and the senior White House official. Bessent joined remotely while traveling to Houston for a previously scheduled public event, one of them said. Following the meeting, the administration attempted to reach Amodei but was told he was unavailable because he was attending a wellness retreat, one of the administration officials and the senior White House official said. A spokesperson for Anthropic rejected the claim that he was at a wellness retreat, saying, “this is absolutely false.” A person close to Anthropic said Amodei was first requested around noon and was on the phone with senior officials within an hour and 15 minutes. While he was out of pocket, Anthropic offered other senior leaders in his place, the person said. When the administration finally reached Amodei, he participated in three calls with a combination of roughly half a dozen senior administration officials, including Cairncross, Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, according to the senior White House official and one of the administration officials. Other senior White House staff and administration officials including Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Jeffrey Kessler, White House staff secretary Will Scharf, White House deputy chief of staff Richard Walters, and assistant to the president for policy Walker Barrett also participated in some of the calls, according to the senior White House official. During the calls, Amodei tried to clear up what he assumed was a misunderstanding. He pushed back on the administration’s concerns, defended the guardrails and argued that the type of bypass that occurred, which he believed to be specific, did not pose the same risk as a broader “jailbreak” that would allow it to be used without any of the guardrails put in place by Anthropic. In a blog post after the export controls were put in place, Anthropic said that “no testers have yet been able to find a universal jailbreak — a jailbreak method that can very broadly bypass the model’s safeguards, unblocking a wide range of cyber capabilities,” and that total avoidance of any jailbreaks isn’t currently possible for them or any other companies. They defended their systems, which they said “are so strong that many users have complained that they are overly broad.” Cairncross and Bessent were unmoved by Amodei’s arguments. A White House official said Amazon’s findings were run past the National Security Agency and they felt they had “proof.” They urged Anthropic to voluntarily remove the model and coordinate with the government to address the vulnerabilities, according to the senior White House official and the two administration officials. Amodei asked for more time and information, but he made no commitments to pull the model, and at one point Bessent told Amodei directly that he was making a “bad decision,” according to the senior White House official. Shortly after the call, the Trump administration imposed its export control on the Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, citing national security authority and banning its use by foreign nationals, according to Anthropic. The company said the “net effect” of the order was to “abruptly disable” the models for all customers “to ensure compliance.” “Export controls were a last resort after begging them for hours to work with us,” the senior White House official said. “This was not something we wanted to do, but our hands were tied.” After publication, one of the people close to Anthropic disputed that the company was given a choice to voluntarily work with the administration. “The White House gave 90 minutes to take the models down, with no details on the actual threat,” the person said. “There was never any begging — or asking — for them to work with us, just a declared 90 minute deadline.” White House officials — who had heard Amodei liken the dangers of Anthropic’s technology to a nuclear bomb — were baffled when the CEO said he was unwilling to take the system down to address a known security vulnerability, the senior White House official said. Anthropic has defined itself among the industry as a vocal advocate for AI regulation to counter massive global security risks and job disruption as AI quickly advances. Three people familiar with the government’s thinking said Amazon wasn’t the only company to raise concerns. “The crux of the issue was the lack of seriousness that Anthropic was applying to it,” said one of the three people. “Had Anthropic taken it seriously and, rather than dismissing it as isolated, moved to fix or pause access, this would have never happened.” A second person close to Anthropic refuted the idea that the “jailbreak” was a breakdown of Fable 5’s safety systems and pointed to the company’s collaboration with the administration before it released Fable. The government didn’t object to Fable’s release in multiple conversations, the person said. In its blog post after the administration enacted the export controls, Anthropic said it was complying with the government’s directive, but called it disproportionate. “As we have stated publicly, we believe the government should have the ability to block unsafe deployments, as part of a statutory process that is transparent, fair, clear, and grounded in technical facts. This action does not adhere to those principles,” Anthropic said. A White House official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said innovation remains the White House’s “number one goal, but we also have to prioritize security as well.” Amazon, in a statement, declined to share the details of its discussions with the administration. “It’s not uncommon for governments to seek our counsel on potential security risks,” an Amazon spokesperson said. “When they occur, we don’t share the details of these discussions.” Anthropic announced in early April that its latest powerful model, Mythos, would only be available to a limited set of tech and cyber firms, which could use it to test for vulnerabilities in their software. The company needed to limit the release because the model was so powerful, it said at the time, that it could wreak havoc in the wrong hands. The model’s debut kicked off a series of meetings between Amodei and senior White House officials. Both sides described those meetings as productive. They led to a series of conversations about regulating advanced models that culminated in a recent executive order, which requested companies voluntarily submit their advanced models to the government before deploying them widely. Fable 5, which launched publicly this week, was described by Anthropic as a “Mythos-class model” with safeguards to make it safe for general use. The model underwent reviews by the administration and the United Kingdom’s AI Security Institute. But once the alleged security flaws were disclosed, multiple administration officials felt the model needed to be pulled. In a post on X on Saturday morning, David Sacks, the former White House AI czar and a staunch opponent of regulation, agreed with the administration’s decision to pursue export controls for Anthropic. Sacks said he did not believe the “jailbreak” was simple or not serious, nor did he believe the export controls were an attempt to exert control over the industry more broadly. “The Admin’s hope now is that Anthropic remediates the safety issue, the export control is lifted, and Fable goes back into general release,” Sacks wrote. “The Admin wants all of this to happen as soon as possible. It is frankly bewildered that Anthropic hasn’t wanted to comply with safety requests that it previously said were its highest priority.” Sacks and other officials in the administration have been critical of Anthropic, accusing it of leftist political bias and fearmongering because of its advocacy for stronger regulation of the industry and warnings about mass job disruption. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon elevated the administration’s disagreements with Anthropic to an unprecedented level earlier this year, designating the company a supply chain risk on March 3 over its refusal to allow its AI tools to be used for mass domestic surveillance and in autonomous weapons. On Saturday, Sacks said the past feuds between the administration and Anthropic were separate from the export control decision. “The Admin values Anthropic’s technical capabilities and feels that this issue, while serious, should be easily resolved. The ball is in Anthropic’s court,” Sacks wrote. Brendan Bordelon contributed to this report.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s potential trade war dominated last year’s G7 as the world’s wealthiest nations gathered in Canada hoping to avert a devastating tariff deadline. This year, it’s Trump’s Iran war that is expected to cast a shadow over the summit in Évian-les-Bains. As the leaders arrive in France, the United States appears on the precipice of a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but crucial details over Iran’s nuclear program will still need to be addressed over the next several weeks. The president’s decision to strike Iran and his back-and-forth over whether attacks will ramp up has him facing a more hostile crowd at this year’s summit, less impressed with his political comeback and more concerned with their own fortunes. The war in the Middle East rattled oil markets, disrupted energy supplies and fueled global inflationary pressures that have created a host of domestic political and economic problems for nations far more dependent on the strait than the United States. “Last year was the trade wars, and now this year you get to talk about the actual war that is causing so much turmoil in the global economy,” said GOP strategist Matthew Bartlett, who served in Trump’s first administration. “Last year, I think many European leaders were on their back foot with Trump returning to power with something of a renewed mandate … Now a year and a half in, I think there’s been diminished influence, certainly with respect to the war in Iran and all of the frustrations that they had with, again, Ukraine, Greenland, his language, his actions.” European leaders hope to entice Trump to reach a final deal with Iran by reiterating their promise to help secure the strait once an agreement is signed. French President Emmanuel Macron also invited Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to the summit to discuss the strait’s reopening. Egypt’s Abdel Fattah El-Sisi is also joining the talks. “I am sure there will be pressure on the president to bring this to a conclusion,” said a former Trump official, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “I don’t think what we’ve done is against British and French interests, and I don’t think they would see that, either. But they’re worried about the fallout. They’re worried about the day after.” The war has taken a toll at home and abroad. In the U.S., inflation hit 4.2 percent in May, its highest mark in three years, driven by high gas and diesel prices. The Bank of Japan is expected to raise interest rates to a 31-year high, as wholesale prices have climbed at the fastest pace in three years. Europe’s central bank on Wednesday raised interest rates amid fears of inflation, though countries have fended off an energy crisis by increasing imports from the U.S. Meanwhile, economists are warning of downstream effects of the strait’s closure — including to the artificial intelligence supply chain — and the World Bank on Thursday said the war is harming the global economy’s prospects for growth. Output in 2026 is expected to grow at an annual rate of 2.5 percent, down from 2.9 percent over the last two years — the slowest pace since the beginning of the Covid pandemic in 2020. France, the summit’s host, hopes to use the meeting to find ways to mitigate the damage from the closed strait such as a potential global food crisis because of high fertilizer prices during planting season. “It’s just not going to be productive to talk about certain aspects of the Iran situation,” said Philip Luck, the deputy chief economist in the State Department during the Biden administration. “The area where it sounds like the French are trying to be the most forward leaning is how the G7 can sort of help solve the broader ramifications of the closure of the strait.” A White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking, said the U.S. goals for the summit touch on a number of policy areas, including investment and trade, artificial intelligence, Ebola, critical minerals, energy and illegal immigration and drug trafficking. The official said the United States plans to highlight its work in several of these areas and encourage other countries to support those efforts. And a senior White House official downplayed suggestions that tensions in the Middle East will dominate this year’s summit any more than they did last year, when the president abruptly left because of the conflict between Iran and Israel. “With last year, there was a cloud of specter around Iran and what we were going to there. It’s the same thing,” said the official, who added that while national security issues will arise, the summit is “always almost focused entirely on trade.” But Trump has already negotiated several trade deals, and the Supreme Court has complicated Trump’s ability to impose new tariffs on a whim, blunting his ability to start new trade wars. Even as the Trump administration is resurrecting its tariff wall, it has promised to stick to trade agreements with every member of the G7. “Things haven’t gotten markedly better in terms of tariff rates, necessarily,” Luck said. “But… we’ve gone through our stages of grief here, and we’re at acceptance. So there’s less to talk about there.” That leaves more room for leaders to discuss Iran. Trump has complained that European leaders didn’t do enough to assist the U.S. in its military operation, rejecting requests to help enforce blockades and secure the Strait of Hormuz. And European leaders remain skeptical of Trump’s war aims and frustrated by the unintended consequences, with Germany’s Friedrich Merz going so far as to say America was “humiliated” by Iran. “You have the United States being the reason for this historic global disruption and disruption in global commodity markets. I can’t think of a precedent where we’re the disruptor — the one who is doing this war of choice is actually a member of the G7, and it’s having effects on all the other member countries,” said Caitlin Welsh, a former senior National Security Council official during Trump’s first term and the director of the Global Food and Water Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It is clearly the elephant in the room.” Megan Messerly contributed to this report.

India’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) has dropped to 1.9 children per woman - lower than the benchmark level of 2.1.

Qatar has earned its first-ever FIFA World Cup point in dramatic fashion against Switzerland.

Increase in road deaths amid rise of e-bikes prompts Houten to test willingness of freedom-loving cyclists to slow downAs road deaths increase and cycle lanes overflow with e-bikes, the Netherlands is considering a cycling speed limit of 12mph (20km/h).The government has started a two-week trial in Houten, near Utrecht, to gauge whether freedom-loving Dutch cyclists are willing to slow down – and whether they have any idea how fast they are going in the first place. Continue reading...

Fencing removed at environmentally sensitive site, mirroring protests against Trump son-in-law’s projectAbout 200 protesters on Saturday tore down metal and razor-wire fences surrounding a luxury development site on Albania’s Adriatic coast, in another sign of growing anger against construction in environmentally sensitive areas.Albanians have been protesting for weeks against a planned luxury resort backed by a company linked to Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald Trump, near Vlora, which is famed for its flamingos and a turtle nesting site. Continue reading...

French president will host world leaders at Évian-les-Bains from Monday

Stock exchange would have option to remain under domestic authority as part of new EU markets regime