Plus, US orders 10% flights cut.

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Daily Briefing

Daily Briefing

By Kate Turton

Hello. Documents show Meta is earning a fortune on fraudulent ads, and the Trump administration orders 10% of flights cut at major US airports. Elsewhere, several prisoners are mistakenly released from UK prisons each week, and Typhoon Kalmaegi death toll rises in the Philippines.

Plus, a look inside King Tutankhamun's treasure trove.

 

Today's Top News

 

A commercial aircraft flies past the Washington Monument during a partial government shutdown. REUTERS/Nathan Howard 

United States

  • Airlines are scrambling and passengers panicking as the US orders 10% of flights to be cut at 40 major airports - a move Democrats say is intended to force their hand in ending the longest government shutdown in history. David Shepardson tells the Reuters World News podcast that the announcement has caused chaos because the FAA hasn't yet said which airports will be impacted. 
  • After the Supreme Court used a conservative legal principle called the "major questions" doctrine to blow holes in former President Joe Biden's agenda, will President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs suffer the same fate?
  • A Spanish-language immersion daycare on the North Side of Chicago was raided by federal immigration agents and a teacher was taken away, panicking school administrators and parents at the center, a staff worker at the daycare told Reuters.
  • In the redistricting war being waged across the country voters in California delivered a much-needed win for Democrats by approving a ballot measure that could gain the party five more seats in the House of Representatives and act as a counterweight to Republican efforts in Texas and elsewhere.

In other news

  • Several prisoners are mistakenly released from British prisons each week, a minister said, revealing the scale of a problem that came to light with the wrongful release of a migrant sex offender whose offences sparked weeks of protests.
  • The blistering rise of Zohran Mamdani to become mayor of New York City has offered encouragement to left-wing parties across Europe that an unabashedly radical agenda could help turn the tide against right-wing forces at home.
  • The US is preparing to establish a military presence at an airbase in Damascus to help enable a security pact that Washington is brokering between Syria and Israel, six sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
  • Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she filed a complaint against a man who groped her and tried to kiss her as she walked between meetings in the capital city, a day after a video of the incident went viral. "If this happens to the president, where does that leave all the young women in our country," said Sheinbaum.
 

Business & Markets

 

Tech sector as percentage of S&P 500 market value.

  • This week's wobble in shares connected to artificial intelligence is a stark reminder that the US stock market is ever more reliant on the technology sector to drive it higher.
  • Tesla's board of directors has pushed in all its chips on Elon Musk. Now investors must decide whether to back the biggest bet in company history. Shareholders will vote on the stark choice presented by the board: pay Musk up to $878 billion in company stock or take the risk he will leave.
  • Toyota, Honda and Suzuki are spending billions of dollars to build new cars and factories in India, a sign of the country's growing importance as a manufacturing hub as Japanese automakers redraw global supply chains to reduce dependence on China.
  • For the latest on global markets, watch our daily rundown.
  • Google plans to build a large artificial intelligence data centre on Australia's remote Indian Ocean outpost of Christmas Island after signing a cloud deal with the Department of Defence earlier this year, according to documents reviewed by Reuters and interviews with officials. Read our exclusive.
  • Tech giants in the world’s second largest economy are rapidly rolling out new machine learning models at a fraction of the price of US rivals. In this Viewsroom podcast, Breakingviews columnists explain how this cheaper offering may give Beijing more soft power globally.
 

Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads

 

Mark Zuckerberg testifying before the US Senate Judiciary Committee in January 2024. Ad screenshots via Reuters. Zuckerberg photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from ads for scams and banned goods, documents seen by Reuters show. And the social media giant internally estimates that its platforms show users 15 billion scam ads a day. Among its responses to suspected rogue marketers: charging them a premium for ads – and issuing reports on 'Scammiest Scammers.'

Read our special report
 

In Pictures

Visitors look at the golden coffin of ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany

Egypt’s Grand Museum is displaying more than 5,000 artifacts from Tutankhamun’s tomb, brought together under one roof for the first time since their discovery over a century ago.

See the photos