US lawmakers press Trump to open trade probe into EU tech rules
US lawmakers press Trump to open trade probe into EU tech rules

A group of US lawmakers has urged President Donald Trump to open a formal trade investigation into the European Union’s two flagship technology laws, arguing that enforcement has fallen unfairly on American companies and warrants retaliation under US t…

Hackers are mass-exploiting two WordPress flaws, and AI found the way in
Hackers are mass-exploiting two WordPress flaws, and AI found the way in

If you run a WordPress site, the advice this week is blunt: update it now. Two flaws in the software are under active exploitation across the internet. WordPress powers more than half of every website online, so the blast radius is huge. Security firms…

Kanishka Narayan becomes the UK’s first cabinet-level AI minister
Kanishka Narayan becomes the UK’s first cabinet-level AI minister

Kanishka Narayan has become the first UK minister for artificial intelligence to sit at the cabinet table, a promotion that arrives as new prime minister Andy Burnham reshapes Whitehall around the technology. Narayan, the MP for the Vale of Glamorgan a…

Samsung creates a CEO-led robotics division to chase humanoid robots
Samsung creates a CEO-led robotics division to chase humanoid robots

Samsung Electronics has pulled its scattered robotics work into a single business division that reports straight to the chief executive, a structural move meant to turn hardware ambition into a genuine growth engine. The new unit, called RX, or Robotic…

France moves a step closer to banning under-15s from social media
France moves a step closer to banning under-15s from social media

Update | 21 July 2026, final vote French lawmakers gave the bill its final parliamentary approval on Tuesday, with the National Assembly adopting the compromise text the joint committee had agreed a day earlier. Under French procedure the Assembly has …

Google is building a chip with Gemini baked into the silicon
Google is building a chip with Gemini baked into the silicon

Most AI chips are general-purpose. You load a model onto them, and they run it. Google is reportedly trying something stranger: a chip that is the model, with Gemini’s blueprint etched into the hardware itself. The project, informally called “Frozen v2…

Four teams just broke AI agents four ways in ten days. The flaw is the same one.
Four teams just broke AI agents four ways in ten days. The flaw is the same one.

We spent two years asking whether AI would lie to us. The more useful question this summer is what happens once we hand it the keys. Give a model your Gmail, your calendar, a memory and the power to act, and its mistakes stop being embarrassing. They s…

Dutch company ASML is $300bn from a trillion. AI could close the gap
Dutch company ASML is $300bn from a trillion. AI could close the gap

ASML has spent 2026 getting steadily, expensively larger. The Dutch company whose machines print the world’s most advanced chips is now Europe’s most valuable listed business, worth around $700bn (€600bn), and enough of the investors who own it now say…

China is rebuilding the smartphone around AI agents. ZTE’s NaviX sold out in hours.
China is rebuilding the smartphone around AI agents. ZTE’s NaviX sold out in hours.

ZTE showcased the NaviX Ultra at the World AI Conference in Shanghai this week, calling it the world’s first agentic AI smartphone. The device, built under ZTE’s Nubia brand, runs ByteDance’s Doubao AI agent and can be activated by voice or a dedicated…

Apple raised iPhone 17 prices by 10% in Japan as the yen hovers near a four-decade low
Apple raised iPhone 17 prices by 10% in Japan as the yen hovers near a four-decade low

Apple raised the price of the iPhone 17 in Japan by roughly 10%, with the entry-level 256GB model now starting at ¥142,800 ($879), up from ¥129,800 previously, Bloomberg reported on Saturday. The iPhone 17 Pro with the same storage rose 8.3% to ¥194,80…