Briefly

UNITED STATES

Stage set for antitrust probes into AI firms

The US Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have reached a deal that clears the way for potential antitrust investigations into the dominant roles that Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia play in the artificial intelligence industry, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing a source familiar with the matter. The Justice Department will take the lead in investigating whether Nvidia violated antitrust laws, while the FTC will examine the conduct of OpenAI and Microsoft. The regulators struck the deal over the past week, and it is expected to be completed in the coming days, the source said.

UNITED NATIONS

Former Cameroonian PM to head UNGA

The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday elected former Cameroonian prime minister Philemon Yang as president of the 79th UNGA session. Yang will succeed Dennis Francis of Trinidad and Tobago, president of the 78th UNGA session, when the 79th UNGA session opens on Sept 10 at the UN headquarters in New York. Yang served as Cameroonian prime minister from 2009 to 2019. Since 2020, he has been serving as the grand chancellor of national orders at the Presidency of the Republic.

SOUTH AFRICA

ANC seeks to form govt of national unity

South Africa's African National Congress will invite other political parties to form a national unity government, its leader President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Thursday, after it lost its majority in the election. After a day-long meeting of the party's National Executive Committee in Johannesburg, Ramaphosa said the ANC had decided that a broad collaboration with other political forces was "the best option to move our country forward". The constitutional deadline will fall on or near June 16.

SUDAN

Paramilitary attack on Omdurman kills 40

The death toll from the artillery shelling by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces on a number of residential neighborhoods in Omdurman city, north of the capital Khartoum, has risen to 40, a nongovernmental resistance committee announced on Friday. The number of people internally displaced in Sudan due to conflict could soon exceed 10 million, the United Nations migration agency IOM said on Friday.

Agencies - Xinhua