Paramount launches $108.4bn hostile bid for Warner Bros Discovery

David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance is not giving up in its aggressive campaign to acquire Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), launching a hostile bid despite the announcement on Friday that Netflix had agreed to buy the company’s studio and streaming operation.Netflix’s accepted bid valued the company at $27.75 a share, though the entertainment company did not agree to acquire WBD’s traditional television assets, including the news network CNN.Paramount’s all-cash tender offer sent directly to shareholders on Monday morning is for $30 a share and would be for the entire company, offering a total enterprise value of $108.4bn, a major premium to the company’s stock price

Divided Fed ponders US interest-rate cut at end of tumultuous year

A divided Federal Reserve meets this week to decide whether to cut interest rates, the US central bank’s last meeting before the end of a tumultuous year.The US central bank faces a number of unique challenges as it weighs its latest interest-rate decision.After the six-week government shutdown briefly shuttered the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the federal agency that collects economic data on prices and employment, Fed officials have less data to make their decision.Making matters more complicated is what appears to be growing internal division among the committee’s voting members, who are split on whether there should be a third rate cut before the end of the year. Rates currently sit at a range of 3

Scores of UK parliamentarians join call to regulate most powerful AI systems

More than 100 UK parliamentarians are calling on the government to introduce binding regulations on the most powerful AI systems as concern grows that ministers are moving too slowly to create safeguards in the face of lobbying from the technology industry.A former AI minister and defence secretary are part of a cross-party group of Westminster MPs, peers and elected members of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish legislatures demanding stricter controls on frontier systems, citing fears superintelligent AI “would compromise national and global security”.The push for tougher regulation is being coordinated by a nonprofit organisation called Control AI whose backers include the co-founder of Skype, Jaan Tallinn. It is calling on Keir Starmer to show independence from Donald Trump’s White House, which opposes the regulation of AI. One of the “godfathers” of the technology, Yoshua Bengio, recently said it was less regulated than a sandwich

A robot walks into a bar: can a Melbourne researcher get AI to do comedy?

Robots can make humans laugh – mostly when they fall over – but a new research project is looking at whether robots using AI could ever be genuinely funny.If you ask ChatGPT for a funny joke, it will serve you up something that belongs in a Christmas cracker: “Why don’t skeletons fight each other? Because they don’t have the guts.”The University of Melbourne’s Dr Robert Walton, a dean’s research fellow in the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, is taking a different approach to working out whether robots can do comedy.Thanks to an Australian Research Council grant of about $500,000, he will train a swarm of robots in standup. And, at least in the beginning, they won’t use words

McCullum insists England do not have a ‘glass jaw’ and can fight back in Ashes

Brendon McCullum has insisted that England have the quality and ­character to fight their way back into the Ashes contest, and refused to accept the idea of players feeling sorry for them­selves after starting the series with two savage defeats.“You come to this country and have a glass jaw, you have no chance,” the head coach said. “You have to be strong, tough, and you have to get on with it.”England travel to Noosa on Tuesday for a short break before moving to ­Adelaide to begin their preparations for the third Test, 2-0 down for the third Ashes series in succession. In 2020-21 Australia converted that lead into a 4-0 series win, but in 2023 ­England fought back to draw 2-2

The once formidable Kansas City Chiefs look old, tired and out of ideas

Patrick Mahomes has led his team to seven straight AFC Championship Games, winning three Super Bowls on the way. That run appears to be overThis is how great runs end. Not with a single catastrophic collapse, but with a slow drift towards the finish, looking old, tired and out of ideas. For the Chiefs, that sense of finality arrived on Sunday night, delivered by the Texans in a 20-10 defeat at home that felt more lopsided than the score.For much of this season, there had been a gnawing sense of inevitability about the Chiefs