safe

South Korea on Thursday formally enacted a comprehensive law governing the safe use of artificial intelligence (AI) models, becoming the first country globally in doing so, establishing a regulatory framework against misinformation and other hazardous effects involving the emerging field.

The Basic Act on the Development of Artificial Intelligence and the Establishment of a Foundation for Trustworthiness, or the AI Basic Act, officially took effect Thursday, according to the science ministry.

It marked the first governmental adoption of comprehensive guidelines on the use of AI globally.

The act centers on requiring companies and AI developers to take greater responsibility for addressing deepfake content and misinformation that can be generated by AI models, granting the government the authority to impose fines or launch probes into violations.

In detail, the act introduces the concept of “high-risk AI,” referring to AI models used to generate content that can significantly affect users’ daily lives or their safety, including applications in the employment process, loan reviews and medical advice.

Entities harnessing such high-risk AI models are required to inform users that their services are based on AI and are responsible for ensuring safety. Content generated by AI models is required to carry watermarks indicating its AI-generated nature.

“Applying watermarks to AI-generated content is the minimum safeguard to prevent side effects from the abuse of AI technology, such as deepfake content,” a ministry official said.

Global companies offering AI services in South Korea meeting any of the following criteria — global annual revenue of 1 trillion won (US$681 million) or more, domestic sales of 10 billion won or higher, or at least 1 million daily users in the country — are required to designate a local representative.

Currently, OpenAI and Google fall under the criteria.

Violations of the act may be subject to fines of up to 30 million won, and the government plans to enforce a one-year grace period in imposing penalties to help the private sector adjust to the new rules.

The act also includes measures for the government to promote the AI industry, with the science minister required to present a policy blueprint every three years.

Following the implementation of the act, the science ministry said it has launched a support desk tasked with offering advisory services to businesses.

The support desk will work to respond to businesses’ general inquiries within three days and those requiring in-depth legal review within 14 days, according to the ministry.

“The AI Basic Act stands at the center of South Korea’s AI industry and the realization of an AI-based society,” Second Vice Science Minister Ryu Je-myung said in a release.

“The support desk will serve as a guide to help the act take root in the local industry,” Ryu added.

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Global stock markets rallied on Thursday as US President Donald Trump rolled back tariff threats linked to Greenland.

Attending the World Economic Forum’s annual summit in Davos, Switzerland, Trump said he had agreed the “framework of a future deal” on Greenland after meeting with Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary-general.

The president claimed he would not use military force to seize the island from Denmark, and also dropped plans to impose extra tariffs on European countries from 1 February.

Details of the future deal are scarce, although investors were visibly cheered by the de-escalation.

Just after the opening bell in Europe, France’s CAC 40 traded 1.31% higher, Germany’s DAX saw a 1.23% lift, Spain’s IBEX 35 was up 1.05%, while Italy’s FTSE MIB rose 0.97%. The UK’s FTSE 100 traded 0.76% higher, while the wider STOXX Europe 600 was up 1.15%.

A global boost as tensions ease

The optimism in Europe mirrored movements in Asian markets, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 rising 1.73%, China’s SSE Composite Index up 0.14%, and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 up 0.75%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng drifted less than 0.1% higher, while South Korea’s Kospi saw a 0.87% boost, breaching the 5,000 mark for the first time and closing at a record 4,952.53.

Over the last 12 months, the Kospi has emerged as the world’s best-performing index on the back of the AI boom, with South Korea home to pivotal chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.

Semiconductor firms, which are already highly valued, saw their stocks climb even further after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang spoke at Davos on Wednesday. Huang claimed that the AI transition would require trillions of dollars of investment, easing fears around overvaluations — at least for now.

The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, which tracks 30 US semiconductor companies, closed 3.18% higher on Wednesday.

Looking at broader US sentiment, S&P 500 futures traded 0.40% higher, Dow Jones futures were up 0.20%, while Nasdaq futures rose 0.64%.

Gold and US Treasuries

As EU-US tensions eased, demand for safe haven assets slid.

As of around 9:30am CET, gold traded 0.19% lower at $4,828.30 per ounce — following a record high of over $4,800 reached on Wednesday.

The metal’s popularity is linked to its liquidity and status as an inflation hedge, but a weaker dollar and falling US interest rates have also boosted bullion.

When the greenback falls in value, this makes gold comparatively cheaper for foreign buyers and therefore drives up demand and prices. Low US interest rates also increase gold’s appeal compared to interest-bearing assets, as investors aren’t significantly losing out if they choose the metal over assets like bonds.

The Dollar Index, which tracks the greenback against six other currencies, traded less than 0.1% higher at 98.81 on Thursday.

Yields on long-term US bonds also slid after a spike earlier in the week, linked to Greenland tensions and threats to Federal Reserve independence as Trump prepares to name a new chair. Another reason for the earlier yield spike is volatility in Japan, with some investors moving money away from US assets into higher-yielding Japanese debt.

In the days ahead, markets will be watching for more details on Trump’s Greenland deal, as Denmark has stressed that the island’s sovereignty is not up for negotiation. An emergency summit between EU leaders will take place in Brussels on Thursday to address the US threat.

Ever since Donald J. Trump descended from a gold escalator at his eponymous Manhattan tower in 2015, he has sworn that a scorched-earth campaign against “illegal immigrants” would make life safer for Americans and that citizens had nothing to worry about.

Well.

In 2025, Trump’s campaign vow to target “the worst of the worst” was set aside in the name of not just going after all undocumented immigrants and limiting legal migration but even the goal of remigration — the idea that immigrants of any status should return to their home countries. Now, U.S. citizens Keith Porter Jr., shot at a Northridge apartment complex, and Renee Nicole Good, whose shooting sparked large protests in Minneapolis, are dead.

ICE is about to storm American streets and neighborhoods with thousands of new recruits who received just eight weeks of training instead of what used to be five months. The Fourth Amendment bans the government from subjecting Americans from “unreasonable searches and seizures” yet we now have a vice president promising that they’re forthcoming across the country.

“I think … we’re [going] to see those deportation numbers ramp up,” JD Vance told Fox News’ Jesse Watters, “as we get more and more people online working for ICE going from door-to-door.”

He repeated his boast the following day during a news conference while adding that the killing of Good — shot while trying to drive away from an agent who stood in front of her SUV during an immigration enforcement operation — was justified, adding that the 37-year-old mother of three was “brainwashed” and “radicalized in a very, very sad way.”

The beginning of 2026 now shows even those in the United States legally are targets for for the too often Keystone Kops-like, eager beaver, trigger happy federal immigration enforcement force I like to call la migra.

This isn’t anything new, of course. Since June, when ICE, Border Patrol and their sister agencies used Los Angeles as a testing ground for what they have inflicted on the rest of the country, the government has treated citizens who dare oppose mass-scale deportations — veterans, Democrats or Republicans, old and young, Latino and not — as an enemy of the “homeland.” Citizens have had their front doors blown out, been hit with pepper balls for praying outside government facilities, been wrongfully charged with assaulting agents, and have seen their identification papers dismissed as fake and thus grounds for detainment.

With the Trump administration’s accelerated recruitment drive for immigration officers and rhetorical bloodlust, don’t be surprised if these masked Bizarro Barney Fifes knock on your door or demand to see your papers. In fact, expect it.

The MAGA excuse for those caught up in la migra‘s crackdown — the way to stay out of trouble is by avoiding it — doesn’t work when the trouble comes to you.

That’s why it seems that the deaths of Porter and Good in the last week, coupled with Vance’s authoritarian promise, seems to be waking up Americans into resisting the deportation Leviathan like never before.

A woman is taken into custody by Border Patrol agents after she was accused of using her vehicle to block their vehicles while they were patrolling in a shopping center in December in Niles, Ill.

(Scott Olson / Getty Images)

Anti-ICE protests are happening across the country this weekend. On social media, conservatives and libertarians who largely stayed silent on Trump throughout 2025 are criticizing him over Good’s death and his administration’s insults against her. Trump’s approval rating has slipped since the start of his presidency, even among supporters — and ICE’s out-of-control conduct is becoming a bigger and bigger factor.

A YouGov poll conducted on the day of Good’s killing found 52% of Americans surveyed don’t like how ICE is operating, while the agency’s approval rating has gone from plus-16% to negative 14% in a year. While the poll unsurprisingly splits on partisan lines — Democrats overwhelmingly oppose ICE, Republicans still think they’re Trump’s Hardy Boys — the independents who delivered the 2024 election to Trump oppose ICE’s actions by a healthy majority.

If he’s losing the middle, he’s losing America.

Unless, of course, Trump goes full banana republic dictator and decides his regime isn’t leaving office — no matter what. And honestly, would you be shocked if this administration tried to make its wet dream a reality?

Every movement needs martyrs, and if the deaths of Porter and Good prove to American citizens and permanent residents once and for all that they’re not safe from ICE, then their deaths weren’t in vain. That’s why the Trump administration and its lackeys are straining so hard to slime Good’s name — because they know the public isn’t having its lies.

Their smears don’t have the same effect they used to, thankfully. Just look at what happened recently with Grok, Elon Musk’s AI creation on X.

You have to take what it digitally blurts out with a grain of salt — Grok once started calling itself “MechaHitler” and spewed anti-semitic conspiracies after an update that Musk swore “improved [it] significantly.”

But consider what Grok did when the billionaire Trump enabler “tweeted” of Good: “She tried to run people over.”

When asked whether it “would have authorized lethal forced based solely on this video evidence” even Musk’s creation, even Grok, replied (while noting that “ICE claims differ”):

“Based on descriptions from multiple sources… it shows the vehicle moving slowly backward and forward without clear evidence of attempting to ram officers. Under objective standards like [the Supreme Court decision] Graham v. Connor, which require an imminent threat for deadly force, I would not authorize lethal force solely on this footage.”

I guess even Grok is capable of calling out Trumpworld’s BS when it “sees” what millions of other people across the U.S. have seen with their own eyes.

Israeli gunfire killed 11-year-old Hamsa Hosou in northern Gaza, her family says, despite a ceasefire in place for nearly three months. She is among more than 400 Palestinians reported killed since the truce took effect.

Reporting from NEW YORK — The National Enquirer kept a safe containing documents on hush money payments and other damaging stories it killed as part of its cozy relationship with Donald Trump leading up to the 2016 presidential election, people familiar with the arrangement told The Associated Press.

The detail came as several media outlets reported on Thursday that federal prosecutors had granted immunity to National Enquirer chief David Pecker, potentially laying bare his efforts to protect his longtime friend Trump.

President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty this week to campaign finance violations alleging he, Trump and the tabloid were involved in buying the silence of a porn actress and a Playboy model who alleged affairs with Trump.

Several people familiar with the National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity because they signed nondisclosure agreements, said the safe was a great source of power for Pecker, the company’s chief executive.

The Trump records were stored alongside similar documents pertaining to other celebrities’ catch-and-kill deals, in which exclusive rights to people’s stories were bought with no intention of publishing to keep them out of the news. By keeping celebrities’ embarrassing secrets, the company was able to ingratiate itself with them and ask for favors in return.

But after the Wall Street Journal initially published the first details of Playboy model Karen McDougal’s catch-and-kill deal shortly before the 2016 election, those assets became a liability. Fearful that the documents might be used against American Media, Pecker and the company’s chief content officer, Dylan Howard, removed them from the safe in the weeks before Trump’s inauguration, according to one person directly familiar with the events.

The AP cannot say whether the documents were destroyed or simply were moved to a location known to fewer people.

American Media did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Pecker’s immunity deal was first reported Thursday by Vanity Fair and the Journal, citing anonymous sources. Vanity Fair reported that Howard also was granted immunity.

Court papers in the Cohen case say Pecker “offered to help deal with negative stories about [Trump’s] relationships with women by, among other things, assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publication avoided.”

The Journal reported Pecker shared with prosecutors details about payments that Cohen says Trump directed in the weeks and months before the election to buy the silence of McDougal and another woman alleging an affair, porn star Stormy Daniels. Daniels was paid $130,000, and McDougal was paid $150,000.

Although Trump denies the affairs, his account of his knowledge of the payments has shifted. In April, Trump denied he knew anything about the Daniels payment. He told Fox News in an interview aired Thursday that he knew about payments “later on.”

In July, Cohen released an audio tape in which he and Trump discussed plans to buy McDougal’s story from the Enquirer. Such a purchase was necessary, they suggested, to prevent Trump from having to permanently rely on a tight relationship with the tabloid.

“You never know where that company — you never know what he’s gonna be —” Cohen says.

“Maybe he gets hit by a truck,” Trump says.

“Correct,” Cohen replies. “So, I’m all over that.”

Pecker is cooperating with federal prosecutors now, but American Media previously declined to participate in congressional inquiries.

In March, in response to a letter from a group of House Democrats about the Daniels and McDougal payments, American Media general counsel Cameron Stracher declined to provide any documents, writing that the company was “exempt” from U.S. campaign finance laws because it is a news publisher and it was “confident” it had complied with all tax laws. He also rebuffed any suggestion that America Media Inc., or AMI, had leverage over the president because of its catch-and-kill practices.

“AMI states unequivocally that any suggestion that it would seek to ‘extort’ the President of the United States through the exercise of its editorial discretion is outrageous, offensive, and wholly without merit,” Stracher wrote in a letter obtained by the Associated Press.

Former Enquirer employees who spoke to the AP said that negative stories about Trump were dead on arrival dating back more than a decade when he starred on NBC’s reality show “The Apprentice.”

In 2010, at Cohen’s urging, the National Enquirer began promoting a potential Trump presidential candidacy, referring readers to a pro-Trump website Cohen helped create. With Cohen’s involvement, the publication began questioning President Obama’s birthplace and American citizenship in print, an effort that Trump promoted for several years, former staffers said.

The Enquirer endorsed Trump for president in 2016, the first time it had ever officially backed a candidate. In the news pages, Trump’s coverage was so favorable that the New Yorker magazine said the Enquirer embraced him “with sycophantic fervor.”

Positive headlines for Trump were matched by negative stories about his opponents, including Hillary Clinton: An Enquirer front page from 2015 said “Hillary: 6 Months to Live” and accompanied the headline with a picture of an unsmiling Clinton with bags under her eyes.