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The United States on Tuesday announced sanctions against 10 individuals and entities based in Iran and Venezuela and allegedly involved in arms trade between the two countries.Targets also included Venezuelan company Empresa Aeronautica Nacional, which is believed to be involved in millions of dollars in drone sales from Iran to Venezuela. According to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, the sanctions also target three individuals living in Iran who are believed to have been involved in procuring chemicals used in ballistic missiles.”Iran’s continued delivery of conventional weapons to Caracas is a threat to U.S. interests in the Western…

In a sense, 2025 was the year that AI dictation apps really took off. Dictation apps have been around for years, but until now they’ve proven time-consuming and inaccurate unless you pronounce them clearly with a specific accent. However, advances in large-scale language models (LLMs) and speech-to-text models have improved systems that can better decode speech while preserving context to format text. The developers also included features that automatically format text, remove fillers, and ignore fumbles to output text that requires less editing. But with the popularity of AI-for-all things skyrocketing, there are dozens of such apps on the market.…

Reuters — Train services through the Channel Tunnel, which connects Britain to continental Europe, were suspended on Tuesday due to a power outage, disrupting peak winter holiday travel. A spokeswoman for Eurostar, which operates high-speed trains between London and Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Disneyland Paris, said services had been suspended indefinitely. Travelers at Gare du Nord were told that services would be suspended until the end of the day. GetLink, which operates the tunnel infrastructure and the Le Shuttle service that transports cars and trucks, said power supply repairs were underway and traffic was expected to gradually resume from 2pm…

Jones was best known as the son of sad-sack divorcee Jon Cryer (and nephew of Charlie Sheen’s Playboy songwriter) on the hit 2000s comedy Two and a Half Men. In 2012, a video surfaced online of Jones slamming the comedy, calling it “filth.” The footage was from a 15-minute religious testimony for Forerunner Chronicles, a Seventh-day Adventist missionary group based in Alabama. Jones later apologized for his “indifference and disrespect for my colleagues and lack of appreciation for the special opportunities I have been blessed with.” The actor left the series soon after, but returned for the final episode in…

1 kg silver bars handpicked at Conclude Zrt bullion dealer arranged in Budapest, Hungary on Monday, February 17, 2025. Akos Stiller | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesOne of the best trades of the year saw a massive reversal.silver futures It fell 8.7% on Monday after topping $80 an ounce for the first time in overnight trading. The precious metal settled at $70.46 per ounce. It was the worst day for silver futures since February 2021.This movement is even more dramatic on an intraday basis. Silver fell 15% from high to low, the largest change from high to low since August 2020,…

General Motors CEO Mary Barra attends the annual Allen & Company Sun Valley Media & Technology Conference at Sun Valley Resort on July 8, 2025 in Sun Valley, Idaho.David A. Grogan | CNBCDetroit — general motors GM stock is poised to become the top publicly traded U.S. automaker stock in 2025, as the Detroit-based company has had its best year since emerging from bankruptcy in 2009.GM stock was up more than 55% as of Friday’s close, hitting a record of more than $80 a share, outpacing the company’s annual gain of 48.3% last year. That included a nearly 13% rise…

Businesses have been piloting and testing various AI tools over the past few years to understand what their adoption strategies will look like. Investors believe the experimental period is nearing its end. TechCrunch recently surveyed 24 enterprise-focused VC firms and predicted that the vast majority will increase their AI budgets in 2026, but not all. Most investors said the budget increases would be concentrated and many companies would spend more money on fewer contracts. Andrew Ferguson, vice president at Databricks Ventures, predicted that 2026 will be the year companies start consolidating investments and picking winners. “Today, companies are testing multiple…

SoftBank has completed a $40 billion investment commitment to OpenAI, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC’s David Faber. The Japanese investment giant ended up transferring between $22 billion and $22.5 billion last week, according to a source who requested anonymity to discuss details of the transaction. SoftBank previously syndicated $10 billion and invested $8 billion in the ChatGPT maker. With this investment, SoftBank’s stake in the company will exceed 10%. CNBC reported in February that the company was finalizing a $40 billion investment in the Sam Altman-run startup at a pre-money valuation of $260 billion. At the time,…

The bigger the orchard, the more bad apples there will be. It is estimated that nearly 5 billion people traveled by air in 2025, a record number, with even more tourists traveling by ship, train and road. While most travelers enjoyed their vacation without incident and pumped a lot of money into the local economy, not all of them were on their best behavior. This is CNN Travel’s list of resolutions to help us all become better global citizens in 2026. It also provides examples of this year’s biggest failures. Let’s hope some of it sticks this time. 1. I…

Workplace experts say that as middle management jobs decline, executives may be underestimating how important these roles are to their companies, especially in the age of AI.The number of middle managers, who are professionals who act as a bridge between senior leaders and front-line employees, has been decreasing in recent years. Middle managers accounted for one-third of all layoffs in 2023, according to an analysis by Bloomberg and LiveData Technologies. According to the “Workforce 2025: Power Shifts” report, which surveyed 15,000 professionals around the world from organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry, 41% of employees said their company has reduced management…