Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of an impending attack from Gaza days before the October 7, 2023 strike, following two earlier warnings, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Egyptian officials sent multiple warnings, including a secret visit to Israel by Kamel and a direct phone call just 48 hours before the violence, urging Israel to take immediate action against escalating risks, reports say.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously denied receiving any advance warnings from regional security chiefs.
Bill Gates is back on the Sunday-show circuit spreading doom and predicting a massive reduction in the human population.
In an exclusive Meet the Press interview set to air this weekend, the Microsoft co-founder told Kristen Welker that artificial intelligence is "certainly powerful enough to drive events that... cause a billion deaths" - then used the line to demand federal legislation, law-enforcement monitoring, and an end to industry self-regulation.
Gates is touting AI as a species-level emergency, and calling for handing over total control to politicians and a new class of global inspectors.
Welker put the extinction question to him directly: "Do you believe AI is powerful enough to end all of humanity?"
Gates answered: "AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths, you know, so even though it's pretty hard to get to 100%, there's never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools."
Watch:
"Pretty hard to get to 100 percent." He almost seems disappointed by that.
Gates did not describe a rogue machine deciding to wipe out the species. He framed the threat as people using the newest models as a weapon - then immediately converted that warning into a Washington to-do list.
Asked whether self-regulation was enough, or whether it had to come with legislation, Gates said: "No one thinks self-regulation is enough, so there needs to be legislation passed in Washington. Absolutely. You need law enforcement and the politicians to get into the discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like and that has to be a required thing and it will be a little bit of overhead for the industry but not a dramatic slowing of what they're doing."
Three days earlier, Gates was on CBS Mornings laying the metaphysical groundwork. Comparisons to past technologies, he said, miss the point. "Most of society is still not aware of how quickly it's moving," he told Gayle King and Norah O'Donnell. "AI is almost an evolutionary event."
He used the same appearance to appeal to President Trump after he called the most extravagant AI-harm claims a "hoax."
Gates said the president is "in the place that everybody else is in, where at first you're like, 'Isn't this just like the technologies of the past?'"
Then came the sales close: "If he wants to get credit for helping the entire world, the AI topic is his best bet. The leader that brings people together there will deserve positive recognition."
Earlier this month, Gates was already calling AI an "alien intelligence," declaring that "no government is nearly as deep on this as they have to be," and floating an international organization built from nuclear inspections, aviation rules, and ozone treaties.
In that press round he reached for a Hollywood script: "There's all sorts of movies where some aliens are coming, and magically the US and China and everybody comes together to solve the problem. AI is kind of like this alien intelligence. It's here, and we better do like it shows in those movies."
On The Times Tech Pod he said industry should not be trusted to police itself: "It's not the role of the industry to self-regulate or understand the whole-of-society impact that comes out of AI." In a late-August essay he wrote that "the transition to the AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history" and that "unfortunately, right now, we are not preparing for it."
Ai is the new big bad threat. For years Gates sold net-zero as civilization's last exit. Then the data-center boom needed power, and last October he asserted that climate change "won't lead to humanity's demise."
The scare machine was not retired. It needed a replacement threat big enough for inspectors and "international coordination." AI arrived on cue: jobs, cyberattacks, companions, bioterror, "loss of control."
The entertainment wing ran the same template. Netflix's The AI Doc was pitched internally as "kind of like 'An Inconvenient Truth' or 'The Social Dilemma' for AI." Lab chiefs and "humane tech" voices walked audiences through impending dread.
Anthropic's Dario Amodei called for a slowdown. Sam Altman piled on. Former Anthropic and OpenAI researcher Jacob Coxon quit and said people building the systems "earnestly believe that it could kill us all before the end of the decade."
Trump has already rejected the pause. The doomer chorus wants the opposite: slow the labs that still lead, write rules in Washington that China will not obey, and call the result "safeguards."
While Gates talks extinction, his foundation writes checks. On September 15 the Gates Foundation pledged at least $1 billion over two years to spread AI through education, health, and agriculture - 40 percent tutoring and classroom tools, 40 percent diagnostics and drug discovery, the rest farming advice and the data layer that makes models work outside English. That money sits inside a previously announced $9 billion-a-year spend.
Gates wrote that left to the market, "AI will be designed by and for the richest people in the world," and that choices in "the next 12 to 18 months" will decide who benefits. The good outcome, he added, "won't happen by accident."
Karim Hawi reached for the last failed countdown: "Same guy that said climate change was going to do that but nothing has happened yet?"
TheConspiracyReport called the clip priming - "the AI hoax table has been set" - and warned of a convenient pre-election shock.
Readers can weigh those claims themselves. What does not require a theory is the sequence on tape: invent a body count, declare self-rule insufficient, demand legislation and monitoring, and invite Trump to become the man who "brings people together" with Beijing.
America does not need Gates's alien-invasion summit. It needs the labs here to stay ahead, the rules written by voters rather than foundations, and a hard no to any regime that treats a billion imaginary corpses as the argument for a new police power over code. The last apocalypse did not arrive on schedule. This one is being pre-sold with a clip package and a Sunday booking.
As part of previous negotiations aimed at ending its war on Iran, the United States offered to sell Tehran uranium for use in a civilian programme, but Iran refused, a top US official said on Sunday.
“Heck, our negotiators even offered to sell them uranium,” US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz said on NBC’s Meet the Press. He said the agreement would have been akin to that with the United Arab Emirates, which has “a peaceful programme, right there in their neighbourhood, and they abide by international law and inspection regimes”.
Waltz said the administration of US President Donald Trump was open to allowing Iran to keep a civilian nuclear programme, provided it agreed to its obligations in accordance with international law and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
There were “a number of ways” President Trump was open to dealing with Iran to ensure it did not have access to highly enriched uranium, or the ability to reconstitute highly enriched uranium, including by having Tehran “hand over” any such material it currently has, Waltz said.
The UAE, a signatory to the NPT, generates electricity from a nuclear power plant and signed an agreement with the US in 2009. Under those agreements, the UAE has agreed not to produce enriched uranium domestically, and not to reprocess spent fuel on its own. Trump said Saudi Arabia and the US reached an agreement on civilian nuclear use this year, but details have not yet been made public, and the US president has also claimed the deal is contingent on Riyadh agreeing to the controversial Abraham Accords. Around the region, Egypt and Turkiye also operate civilian nuclear programmes.
Pakistan openly operates a nuclear arsenal, while experts have long believed Israel secretly possesses one of its own. Neither country is a signatory to the NPT.
A key point of contention between Iran and the US has been what should be done with the uranium that Tehran currently has, and how, or even if, to ensure any future supply of the material is not capable of being used for producing a nuclear weapon. Iran has insisted it has no plans to create a nuclear weapon, and any uranium it possesses and enriches is only for civilian purposes, including for generating electricity and use in medical treatments and scientific research.
Iran is estimated to have more than 440kg (970lb) of uranium enriched at 60 percent purity. Uranium enriched to around 90 percent purity is suitable for a nuclear weapon. Enriching uranium is a complex process that involves isolating the most radioactive isotope in a quantity of uranium. Under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran agreed to cap its uranium enrichment at 3.67 percent under strict international supervision in exchange for lifting sanctions against its economy. Trump scrapped that deal in 2018, saying it was too generous to Iran.
On September 10, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it was concerned over Iran’s “continued noncompliance” with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it is a signatory. Under the treaty, Iran agrees not to produce nuclear weapons and to meet IAEA safeguards to control its supply of uranium used for civilian purposes. The agency has not had access to key Iranian nuclear facilities since June 2025, when Israel and the US attacked sites in the country as part of a 12-day war.
Iranian officials have responded to the IAEA by saying the finding was made “under political pressure from the US and its allies”, and that they have not stopped respecting their treaty obligations, but could not allow inspections until facilities were safe from US and Israeli attacks.
At times, Trump has said he will destroy the enriched uranium Iran has or retrieve it by force. In April, the US president claimed to have convinced Iran to turn over the enriched uranium it had, which he referred to as “nuclear dust”. Iranian officials quickly dismissed those claims, saying enriched uranium would not be transferred outside the country under any circumstances.
On Saturday, Trump rejected a plan submitted by Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days, as Tehran continued to insist that only diplomacy can solve the conflict between the two countries. Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said on Saturday that Iran wants to make a deal to open the vital maritime corridor immediately only “because they are losing so badly”.
In an interview on Meet the Press on Sunday, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said that Iran is prepared for war to resume, “even if it comes to a doomsday war”.
He added, “If you ask us, there is no reason why we should go back to diplomacy. But I’m still trying diplomacy, because I think we shouldn’t miss any chance for peace.”
The two will meet for dinner at the president’s residence, two sources familiar with the dinner confirmed to The Hill.
Trump in recent weeks has dismissed concerns from lawmakers and industry leaders about the risks of AI. Amodei, whose firm developed the Claude chatbot, was among those to call for a slowdown in development.
“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain,” Amodei wrote in an essay earlier this month after one of his researchers resigned and said AI poses dire risks to humanity.
Amodei was not among the host of tech industry leaders to attend Thursday’s state dinner at the White House in honor of Chinese President Xi Jinping, a group that included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
“President Trump has been clear: America will lead the world in Super Intelligence, while protecting American consumers,” a White House official told The Hill, referring to the president’s moniker for AI.
“We will drive innovation, strengthen American competitiveness, and ensure this transformative technology works for the American people,” the official added.
Anthropic has for months been mired in a legal fight with the Pentagon for months over its designation of the company as a supply-chain risk.
The District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling, sided with the Defense Department on Friday. The federal appeals court allowed the Pentagon to continue designating the company’s technology as a national security risk.
“Confirmed: @AnthropicAI = Supply Chain Risk,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on social media after the ruling. “The @DeptofWar does what is right for the Country and our Warriors.”
TikTok and its creator ByteDance struck a deal Friday with Alabama that will pay the state at least $100 million and force changes in how teenagers use the app, days before what would have been the first state trial over claims the platform was built to addict minors.
The money is due within 45 days. It can climb to $300 million if certain conditions are met, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall's office said. Alabama was set to select a jury on Monday.
"This is a great day for Alabama parents," Marshall said. "Tonight, they can rest easier knowing real protections are in place to shield their children from the dangers of social media addiction. TikTok has agreed to give parents real control over what their kids see and how much time they spend on the app."
The complaint had accused TikTok of designing addictive features, exposing young users to serious mental harms, and misleading the public about safety.
TikTok did not admit those claims in the papers released Friday.
The company did not immediately return a request for comment.
The deal requires teen accounts in Alabama to have a two-hour daily cap, which parents can further shorten. After 15, 60, and 90 minutes of continuous use, the app must interrupt the session, a feature the office called "productive pauses," intended to break endless scrolling.
Teen accounts will be unavailable from midnight to 6 a.m. Messaging and push alerts face extra limits overnight and during school hours. In addition, cosmetic filters are banned for teen users.
The default feed for those accounts is to remain non-personalized, and teen accounts are to be harder for adults to find. Parents get notice of suspicious contacts. Parental controls are supposed to be easier to use.
Last month, a multi-state Meta deal was set to bring Alabama $117 million on similar youth-harm allegations. Earlier, Roblox paid the state $12.2 million and agreed to tighter age checks and chat rules.
The Alabama deal arrives as other fights progress.
On Sept. 10, a Travis County, Texas, judge ruled that TikTok violated the state's consumer protection law by misleading users about tools meant to keep minors from harmful videos. Judge Cory Liu found Restricted Mode did not work as marketed.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the case now goes to trial next month to set penalties.
"TikTok sacrificed the safety and innocence of children for engagement and numbers, and now they are being held accountable," Paxton said then.
In early August, TikTok moved to settle three confidential teen mental-health suits. Lawyer Joseph VanZardt said written papers still had to be finished.
The plaintiffs - identified only as S.J., 15, of Illinois; P.M.Y., 15, of New Jersey; and K.D.B., 18, of Mississippi - alleged addiction, depression, self-harm and, in two cases, eating disorders. Roughly 3,300 similar suits sit before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl. Meta, YouTube, and Snapchat still face an October trial calendar.
A March jury in that same court awarded $4.2 million against Meta and $1.8 million against Google in a related individual case. TikTok settled that one before opening statements.
In August, the Justice Department separately announced TikTok and ByteDance would pay $400 million to resolve Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) claims. Officials called it one of the largest COPPA recoveries on record. The company did not admit fault.
Around 157,000 children who crossed the border as unaccompanied minors have been found since the start of the Trump administration while many are still missing, White House border czar Tom Homan told The Epoch Times.
In an interview with senior editor Jan Jekielek for "American Thought Leaders," airing on Sept. 26, he said that just under half a million children were "smuggled" into the United States during the Biden administration.
Homan said officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) at the time were proud of the fact that children weren't in detention for long.
"They weren't [held] very long, but the problem is they released them quickly because the sponsors weren't properly vetted," he said, and with caretakers not responding to communications or check-ins, that caused the government to lose track of nearly 300,000 of the children.
Homan said that when President Donald Trump asked him to return to the federal government under his second administration, one of the top directives he was given was to address the problem of missing children.
"He asked me to do three things: secure the border, run deportation operations, and find these kids."
The border czar said he was much more optimistic about the first two directives than he was about finding the children, because his team would have to count on the digital footprint of the sponsors, based on information provided by the sponsors.
"We can find you, we can find me. We own homes, we own cars, we have credit cards. We can find us because we all have a digital footprint. Children don't," Homan said.
Some Democrats on Capitol Hill have objected to the treatment of unaccompanied minors after they've been located.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) condemned the current administration in June for plans to deport some of the children back to Mexico.
"You have been entrusted with the care and safety of the children placed within the [Office of Refugee Resettlement] network," Wyden said in a letter to the HHS. "Proceeding with this plan knowingly endangers their lives and violates your duty to these vulnerable children."
When officials began searching for the children, they learned that many of the sponsors had given the wrong information, such as home addresses that turned out to be supermarkets, parking lots, or churches. False names had been used for identification, and locating where the children actually were proved to be a massive undertaking.
Homan told The Epoch Times that of the roughly 157,000 children who have been found, more than 20 have died - some due to natural causes, and others from a drug overdose or as a result of violence.
The work isn't done, however, and he said he intends to find every one of the 140,000 still missing children, even those who have aged out of the system.
"Just because you're 18 and 19 doesn't mean they're not in forced labor or sex trafficking, so we're going to keep running down every one of these leads until we find them," the border czar said.
In 40 years of working at the border Homan has seen many victims of human trafficking, but one in particular broke his heart. He said he'll never forgot a 9-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted while making the journey to the United States years ago: "That little girl's never going to be the same again."
"Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime. You don't come across the border without approval and paying off the cartels," he said. "A lot of women and children are sexually assaulted making that journey."
Last month, HHS announced that the Trump administration had located more than 148,000 unaccompanied illegal immigrant children who had been missing after being released into the care of someone in the United States.
A statement from the Department of Homeland Security last November announced an initiative partnering with local law enforcement to conduct welfare checks on the lost children.
Homan told The Epoch Times that despite the monumental task of finding the still missing children, "We're not giving up."
"President Trump has promised that we're going to look at this until the last day of the administration, and the American people can have my word that we're going to do that."
Merck & Co. and Daiichi Sankyo have withdrawn their application seeking accelerated approval for a small cell lung cancer treatment, saying the data they had submitted to the Food and Drug Administration was insufficient.
The two companies said they decided to withdraw the Biologics License Application for ifinatamab deruxtecan after discussions with the FDA that the data included in the application, including the results of a Phase 2 trial, do not meet the requirements for an accelerated approval.
The companies continue to enroll patients in a Phase 3 trial of the drug. Two other Phase 3 trials evaluating the drug as a treatment for prostate cancer and a form of carcinoma are also under way.
"While we are disappointed that the current dataset are not supportive of an approval at this time, we are continuing to evaluate the role of ifinatamab deruxtecan in patients with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer and other types of difficult-to-treat cancer," said Marjorie Green, Merck Research Laboratories head of oncology.
