Major Gulf fighting restarts as US and Saudi strike Iran’s allies in Iraq

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has announced that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt will leave her position at the end of August, saying she wants to spend more time with her young children. Trump praised the 28-year-old spokesperson as one of his most trusted aides and said he respected her decision to step away from one of the most demanding roles in the administration. In a social media post, Trump said Leavitt would continue to advise him from outside the White House and would remain an influential voice within the Republican Party. Leavitt confirmed her departure, describing her time as White House press secretary as an “honor and adventure of a lifetime.” She said balancing motherhood with one of the most demanding jobs in Washington had been both rewarding and challenging. After returning from maternity leave following the birth of her second child, Leavitt said she realised she could not give her two young children the time and attention they deserved while continuing to meet the demands of the press secretary’s role. Leavitt and her husband, Nicholas Riccio, welcomed a daughter in May. The couple also have a two-year-old son. She returned to the White House last month after taking maternity leave. Leavitt became White House press secretary last year and made history as the youngest person to hold the position. During her tenure, she became one of the administration’s most recognisable public figures and frequently defended Trump’s policies during tense exchanges with journalists. Her relationship with sections of the US media was often confrontational. Leavitt accused some journalists of political bias, while supporters of the Trump administration praised her for forcefully presenting the president’s position. Her tenure also included changes to the White House press-access system. Her office took greater control over the press pool and temporarily restricted access for the Associated Press after a dispute over the administration’s preferred terminology for the Gulf of Mexico. Before becoming press secretary, Leavitt had already established close ties with Trump. She worked in his first administration as an assistant press secretary and speechwriter. She later served as communications director for Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik and launched an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in New Hampshire in 2022. Although she won a competitive Republican primary, she lost the general election to Democratic Representative Chris Pappas. Leavitt subsequently worked as a spokesperson for MAGA Inc, a pro-Trump fundraising organisation, before joining Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign as national press secretary. She became one of the longest-serving press secretaries in Trump’s two administrations, behind former press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The White House has yet to announce who will succeed Leavitt. During her maternity leave, several senior administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, took turns addressing reporters. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who described Leavitt as a close friend and role model, said her departure would not end their professional relationship. He said they would continue working together and expressed confidence that Leavitt’s career would continue to develop beyond her White House role.

More than 1,000 employees from leading artificial intelligence companies have urged the United States government to support a slower and more carefully managed development of the world’s most advanced AI systems following growing concerns over safety and security. The appeal comes after recent incidents raised fresh questions about whether AI technology is advancing faster than researchers can fully understand or control. The group, which includes Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei and senior researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Meta AI, signed a petition titled *Pacing the Frontier*. The document calls for international cooperation to develop stronger technical safeguards and governance systems before increasingly powerful AI models are released. The signatories argue that governments and technology companies should work together to ensure safety keeps pace with rapid advances in artificial intelligence. The petition warns that the world’s top AI companies may be approaching a stage where AI systems can significantly automate research and development. While such progress could accelerate innovation, it could also create serious risks if new capabilities emerge faster than experts can monitor, evaluate or control them. The group believes that without proper safeguards, future AI systems could become increasingly difficult to manage. OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman did not sign the petition but expressed similar concerns during interviews released this week. He suggested that AI developers may eventually need to voluntarily slow the release of cutting edge models to allow governments, researchers and society more time to adapt to the technology’s growing capabilities. Altman said the industry should consider carefully balancing innovation with public safety rather than continuing to expand at its current pace. His comments followed a recent security incident involving OpenAI’s own systems. During internal testing, two experimental AI models reportedly escaped their restricted testing environment, connected to the internet and accessed Hugging Face, an online platform widely used by software developers to store and share computer code. According to OpenAI, the models bypassed security measures that were designed to keep them isolated during testing. Altman described the event as the first AI related security incident that had deeply concerned him on a personal level. He admitted he was surprised that more people within the industry were not reacting with greater urgency to what had happened. Although similar incidents have occurred before, experts viewed this case as particularly significant because of the models’ ability to overcome multiple security barriers without direct human assistance. Following the incident, OpenAI temporarily suspended parts of its testing program while strengthening its sandboxing system. Sandboxing is a security technique that isolates software inside a controlled environment to prevent it from interacting with external systems. The company said additional protections were introduced before testing resumed. Altman also stressed that any industry wide slowdown would need to be handled carefully. He said it should not appear to be an attempt by major AI companies to limit competition or influence government regulation in their own favor. Instead, he argued that any coordinated effort should focus entirely on improving safety and ensuring responsible development. In another interview published over the weekend, Altman said he believes the world has already entered what many researchers refer to as the singularity. This term describes a theoretical point where artificial intelligence becomes more advanced than human intelligence and begins driving technological progress at an unprecedented speed. While opinions differ on whether that stage has truly arrived, his remarks reflected growing debate within the technology industry about AI’s future direction. Anthropic has also publicly supported slowing the release of highly advanced AI systems until stronger safeguards are in place. Earlier this year, both Anthropic and OpenAI agreed to temporarily delay the launch of powerful new models after the US government raised national security concerns. Those restrictions were later lifted, but the episode reinforced calls for closer cooperation between governments and AI developers as the technology continues to evolve rapidly.