Today's briefing
A US deportation flight landed in Venezuela hours before Wednesday's devastating earthquakes, leaving over 100 deportees trapped when their hotel in La Guaira collapsed. Search and rescue teams are still working through rubble five days later, with families across two continents waiting for news. The flight carried 146 Venezuelans, including 19 women and 7 children.
The UK government's new immigration and asylum bill will require asylum seekers to repay roughly £10,000 in state-funded living costs or be denied settled status — a scheme officials are comparing to student loans, though charities call it a tax on people fleeing war and torture. The bill is due before MPs on Tuesday. It arrives alongside a separate announcement raising the minimum sentence for domestic murder to 25 years.
Peru's conservative candidate Keiko Fujimori has won the presidency, defeating left-wing rival Roberto Sanchez in the June 7 runoff after weeks of disputed ballot reviews. The daughter of late authoritarian president Alberto Fujimori is the latest in a string of right-wing victories reshaping Latin American politics. Her margin of victory was fewer than 50,000 votes out of more than 18 million cast.
Hundreds of Meta contractors systematically impersonated minors to prompt competitors' AI chatbots — including Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT — into discussing suicide, sex, and drugs. The operation exposes the murky competitive intelligence tactics now common in the AI industry and raises fresh questions about chatbot safety guardrails. The contractors were working on a project commissioned directly by Meta.
Britain's Financial Conduct Authority has announced regulations requiring crypto firms to prove they can withstand market shocks and hold capital against risky assets — the most significant oversight the industry has faced in the UK despite years of explosive growth. The rules take effect from October next year, giving firms roughly 16 months to comply. The move follows a boom in crypto adoption driven partly by social media influencers.
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