🇺🇸 Trump EPA to shift at least half of waived biofuel obligations to big refiners

The Trump administration has settled on a plan that would require big oil refineries to make up for at least half of the biofuel blending volumes obligations waived in recent years under the Small Refinery Exemption program.

Under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), oil refineries have to blend billions of gallons of ethanol and other biofuels into their fuel or buy credits, called RINs, from those that do. But small refineries can have those obligations waived if they demonstrate economic hardship. Biofuel groups have pushed the administration to fully reallocate the exempted gallons, saying it is crucial to support biofuel producers and the farmers growing their feedstocks.

The EPA also sent its proposed 2026 and 2027 biofuel blending quotas to the White House, with a final rule expected before the end of March, an EPA administrator told attendees at an ethanol conference in Florida.

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🇺🇸🇰🇵 White House: the US is open to dialogue with North Korea without preconditions

The United States remains open to dialogue with North Korea without preconditions. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said this week there was no reason to not have a good relationship with the U.S.

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⚡️🇺🇸 Pentagon Anthropic feud has sales and AI warfare at stake as Friday deadline looms

An explosive feud between the Pentagon and top AI lab Anthropic is set to come to a head today over concerns about how the military could use AI at war. Friday deadline set for whether Anthropic, Pentagon can reach deal. 🤔 The Pentagon wants any lawful use to be allowed and has threatened Anthropic’s business if the startup does not scrap additional guardrails.

“It’s a shot across the bow about the future of AI and its use on the battlefield,” Chris Miller, the former acting secretary of defense, told Reuters. He added that the outcome will “be an acid test for those companies that claim to want to use AI humanely.”

The months-long spat has divided some industry leaders, military officials and lawmakers over whether AI should be wielded without constraints when its creator Anthropic said the technology was not yet reliable for fully autonomous weapons.

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🇯🇵 Rapidus secures $1.7 billion from Japan’s government and private investors for 2nm chip production

Japan's state-backed chipmaker Rapidus has announced that it has closed a ¥250 billion ($1.6 billion) funding round from the Japanese government and 30 private-sector companies, including Sony, Toyota, SoftBank, Canon, Fujitsu, Denso, Kioxia, and Seiko Epson, as the company works toward 2nm mass production at its IIM-1 foundry in Chitose, Hokkaido, by fiscal year 2027.

Under the arrangement, the government will initially hold roughly 10% of Rapidus's voting shares and the majority of its stake in non-voting stock. CEO Atsuyoshi Koike said that Rapidus is in active discussions with more than 60 companies looking to design chips for AI, robotics, and edge computing.

Rapidus plans to start mass production at an initial rate of 6,000 12-inch wafers per month, scaling to approximately 25,000 within the first year. Total investment needed to reach that point is estimated at around ¥4 trillion; roughly ¥1.7 trillion has been committed from all sources to date.

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⚡️ OpenAI actively pursuing classified deal with Pentagon to deploy its AI models in military environments

OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman told staff that the company was working on a potential deal that could help resolve the standoff between Anthropic and the Pentagon over battlefield AI use. CEO Sam Altman confirmed the negotiations in an internal note to staff.

“We are going to see if there is a deal with the DoW that allows our models to be deployed in classified environments and that fits with our principles,” Altman wrote.

The proposed contract would cover any use except those which are unlawful or unsuited to cloud deployments, such as domestic surveillance and autonomous offensive weapons.

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⚡️🤝 OpenAI eyes global domination with $110B Amazon and NVIDIA raise, value hits $840B

OpenAI has raised $110 billion in new funding at a $730 billion pre-money valuation, marking one of the largest capital raises in the technology sector. The round includes $30 billion from SoftBank, $30 billion from NVIDIA, and $50 billion from Amazon. Additional investors may join as the round progresses.

OpenAI and Amazon announced a multi-year strategic partnership to accelerate AI innovation for enterprises, startups, and consumers. The agreement strengthens distribution and enterprise reach. OpenAI also expanded its long-standing collaboration with NVIDIA. The company will use 3 gigawatts of dedicated inference capacity and 2 gigawatts of training capacity on NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin systems.

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🇩🇪 BMW to trial humanoid robots at German factory

German carmaker BMW said that it plans to deploy two AI-powered humanoid robots in a factory in Leipzig in a pilot programme for the first time this year.

Dubbed AEON and developed by the Swedish company Hexagon, the black-and-white robots can autonomously manipulate and move components within a factory where the space has been previously fully scanned and digitised. The robot has a full awareness of its environment thanks to 22 sensors and various types of cameras and it's battery life is about 3 hours, but the Swedish developer said the robots can replace their own battery in about 30 seconds using a charging station.

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🍔 Burger King rolls out AI headsets that track employee 'friendliness'

Burger King is testing AI-powered employee headsets that monitor staff interactions with customers and oversee store operations. The AI system, called BK Assistant, compiles "friendliness scores" at the fast-food chain's locations based on employees' conversations.

An AI chat-bot dubbed "Patty", embedded in the headsets, answers questions from employees about how to prepare menu items and flags when a product needs restocking. Burger King's chief digital officer told that the fast-food outlet had trained the OpenAI-powered system to identify terms including "please" and "thank you" in order to evaluate staff friendliness. The system analyses audio from drive-thru interactions.

The tool is designed to streamline restaurant operations to let managers and staff focus more on guest service and team leadership. All 500 US Burger King restaurants are poised to have access to the BK Assistant AI platform by the end of 2026.

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🇦🇪🇸🇦UAE and Saudi boost oil exports

UAE oil producer Abu Dhabi is set to export more of its flagship Murban crude in April. Oil hit $73 a barrel on Friday, the highest level since July.

"The boost in exports will definitely create a short-term buffer of any Strait of Hormuz disruptions and/or any shipping companies deciding to avoid the region," said Scott Shelton, analyst at TP ICAP.

State-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) offered additional volumes to partners in its onshore concession. Two onshore fields will be shut for maintenance in May, affecting export availability. Partners in Murban crude producer ADNOC Onshore, which include BP (BP.L), TotalEnergies (TTЕF.PA) , China National Petroleum Corp, Inpex (1605.T), Zhenhua Oil and South Korea's GS Energy, are entitled to about 40% of production of the grade at about 2 million barrels per day.

#BRICS

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🇺🇸 Trump directs US agencies to toss Anthropic's AI as Pentagon calls startup a supply risk

U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that he is directing the government to stop work with Anthropic, and the Pentagon said it would declare the startup a supply-chain risk, dealing a major blow to the AI lab after a showdown about technology guardrails.

Trump added there would be a six-month phase-out for the Defense Department and other agencies that use the company's products. If Anthropic does not help with the transition, Trump said, he would use "the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow."

The moves further set a precedent that U.S. law alone would constrain how AI is deployed on the battlefield, with the Pentagon seeking to preserve all flexibility in defense and not be limited by warnings from the technology's creators against powering weapons with unreliable AI. In a statement, Anthropic said it would challenge any risk designation in court by the Department of War.

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🤖 Nvidia plans new chip to speed AI processing

Nvidia plans to launch a new processor designed to help OpenAI and other customers build faster, more efficient AI systems. The company is developing a new system for "inference" computing, a form of processing that allows AI models to respond to queries. The new platform is set to be unveiled at Nvidia’s GTC developer conference in San Jose next month and will incorporate a chip designed by startup Groq.

Earlier OpenAI was unsatisfied with the speed at which Nvidia’s hardware can spit out answers to ChatGPT users for specific types of problems such as software development and AI communicating with other software. It needs new hardware that would eventually provide about 10% of OpenAI’s inference computing needs in the future.

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🛢 OPEC+ may consider larger oil output boost

OPEC+ may consider a larger than planned output increase and Saudi Arabia and the UAE have already raised exports in anticipation of possible oil disruption. Eight members of the grouping of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies - Saudi Arabia, Russia, the UAE, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Iraq, Algeria and Oman - were already scheduled to meet on Sunday at 11:00 GMT.

The eight OPEC+ members raised production quotas by about 2.9 million bpd from April through December 2025, roughly 3% of global demand, before pausing further increases for January to March 2026 due to seasonal weakness.

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🇰🇷 South Korea set to finally get a fully functioning Google Maps

South Korea will soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps doesn't work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers.

The approval was made "on the condition that strict security requirements are met," the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said in a statement. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth.

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⚡️🇷🇺🇨🇳 Russia and China call for emergency United Nations Security Council meeting following events in Iran.

U.N. diplomats said the 15-member body would meet at 4 p.m. local time in New York (21:00 GMT) on Saturday. Russia's U.N. mission said Russia and China requested an emergency meeting. The meeting was also called for by France, Bahrain, and Colombia. The meeting will be chaired by Britain, which holds the monthly council presidency.

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🤖 ASML says next-gen EUV tools ready to mass-produce chips, marking key shift for AI chip production  

ASML Holding's next-generation chipmaking machine is ready for manufacturers to start bringing it into use for production at high volumes, a big step for the chip industry.

The Dutch company produces the world's only commercial extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) tools, which are a critical piece of equipment for chipmakers. This new tool will help chipmakers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and Intel produce more powerful and efficient chips. ASML plans to release this data, which represents a key milestone, at a technical conference in San Jose on Thursday, the company's chief technology officer, Marco Pieters, told.

The High-NA EUV tools now experience limited downtime, have produced 500,000 dinner-plate-sized silicon wafers and can draw sufficiently precise patterns that make up the circuits on the chip, the ASML data shows, Pieters said.

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