US President Donald Trump says the Hamas-held captives in Gaza will be released “Monday or Tuesday” as part of his ceasefire plan creating “peace in the Middle East”. He added it is time for the war to end after Israel’s “big retribution” to Hamas’s October 7th attack.
Despite United States President Donald Trump’s tariff and immigration policies roiling businesses, the US economy is relatively stable. Experts say the country can thank the artificial intelligence (AI) industry for that.
“AI machines—in quite a literal sense—appear to be saving the US economy right now,” George Saravelos of Deutsche Bank wrote to his clients at the end of September. “In the absence of tech-related spending, the US would be close to, or in, recession this year.”
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Economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has made similar observations in his Substack newsletter. AI companies are investing hundreds of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure and development, and other US companies are spending billions on AI products.
Just last month, a data centre in Abeline, Texas, the flagship site of the $500bn Stargate programme, a joint venture between Oracle, OpenAI and Japan’s SoftBank to advance AI infrastructure in the US, came online.
Around the same time, chipmaker Nvidia said it would invest up to $100bn in OpenAI and provide it with data centre chips. It also became the first US company to hit a $4 trillion market value. It was soon followed in that benchmark by Microsoft, which has seen its stock price surge, with AI one of key factors driving business demand.
Nvidia and Microsoft are not alone. Google’s parent company Alphabet and Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, have upped their commitments to their AI ambitions and investments.
All of this enthusiasm surrounding AI appears to be holding up the US economy for the moment, but there are fears that this could be a “bubble” similar to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s.
“The reason people are worried about an AI bubble is because seven companies are pulling more than 400 others forward,” Campbell Harvey, a professor of finance at Duke University, told Al Jazeera.
A look at the S&P 500 shows that seven tech companies that are heavily involved in AI are the ones creating the most growth.
Harvey admits that since it’s still early days in AI adoption and growth, it’s hard to say if the stocks of those tech companies are overvalued.
“While share prices look somewhat elevated, there’s also real revenue behind the massive push to build data centres,” said Carl Frey, an associate professor of AI & Work at Oxford University. “A bubble may be building, but we’re nowhere near tulip mania territory,” he said, referring to the massive increase in tulip prices in the Netherlands in the 17th century, an event often held up as a hallmark of a bubble.
“The worry is that early AI adopters are having second thoughts. Large corporations that rushed in are narrowing projects to the few that clearly save money or make money, and putting the rest on ice,” he said.
For instance, major corporations like IBM and Klarna cut thousands of jobs in customer service and replaced them with AI—only to start reversing course not so long after they made that decision. They found the technology couldn’t do everything they hoped, compared to human workers.
If major corporations that have spent large sums of money adopting AI tools end up deciding that these tools are not actually that useful for their businesses, that could be a serious problem for AI companies. They could end up with fewer customers, and their stock prices could begin to tumble as projected profits decline.
A report released by MIT in August found that 95 percent of companies that have adopted AI are not achieving significant revenue acceleration from it. Data from the US Census Bureau shows that AI adoption by large companies has started to slow down recently.
It would appear that people are starting to question the utility of these AI tools, which are often used to replace people in jobs like customer service, software engineering and several other entry-level jobs.
“There’s a growing sense that a lot of companies raced to add AI to their operations last year because of the hype surrounding its power, and the fear of falling behind,” said Cal Newport, a professor of computer science at Georgetown University. “It turns out, however, that integrating generative AI, in particular, into existing workflows in significantly useful ways is harder than people thought.”
Newport says the underlying models in these AI programmes are currently “too unreliable” to be able to successfully automate jobs. He notes the idea that we would see AI rapidly taking jobs right now “has simply not come true”.
A recent Stanford study found that entry-level jobs in customer service, accounting and software development have decreased by 13 percent since 2022 because of the adoption of AI tools in large companies.
It’s not clear that AI has reached “bubble” territory yet, but it might, and if that bubble were to burst, it could do a lot of damage to the US economy.
Frey says the dot-com bubble was very costly for investors, but it “left behind technologies and infrastructure that ultimately lifted productivity.” The question is whether this AI situation will play out the same way.
Pending Senate confirmation, Professor Joash Ojo Amupitan, SAN, is set to succeed Professor Mahmood Yakubu as Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Amupitan’s nomination by President Bola Tinubu to replace Yakubu, who bowed out on Tuesday, was approved by the National Council of State on Thursday.
With a career spanning more than 35 years in academia, administration, and legal practice, Professor Joash Amupitan brings extensive experience and intellectual depth to his nomination as Chairman of the INEC.
READ ALSO: UPDATED: Council Of State Approves Tinubu’s Nominee Amupitan As New INEC Chairman
If confirmed by the Senate, his appointment will mark the beginning of a new chapter for Nigeria’s electoral body following the 10-year tenure of Yakubu.
Here are seven facts about the new INEC Chair nominee:
Professor Joash Amupitan was conferred with the prestigious rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) in August 2014.
Professor Amupitan joined the services of the University of Jos in 1989 as an Assistant Lecturer and rose through the Academic ranks to attain the position of Reader in 2003 and Professor of Law in 2008.
He has supervised numerous postgraduate students and received the Teslim Elias Award for Meritorious Service in 2014.
As of October 25, 2022, he serves as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Administration) at the University of Jos.
He previously held several leadership roles, including Dean, Faculty of Law (2008–2014), Chairman, Committee of Deans and Directors (2012–2014), Head, Department of Public Law (2006–2008).
Born in April 1967, the 58-year old Professor Amupitan hails from Aiyetoro-Gbede in Ijumu Local Government Area of Kogi State, North-Central Nigeria.
During his undergraduate years at the University of Jos, Amupitan graduated top of his class in 1987, winning several awards. He won the Richard Akinjide’s Prize and the University of Jos Chancellor’s Prize
After earning his LL.B (Hons) at University of Jos, 1987, Professor Joash Amupitan went ahead to complete his B.L at the Nigerian Law School, 1988, His LL.M in 1993, and his Ph.D in Law at the University of Jos, 2007
His teaching and research interests cover Company Law, Corporate Governance, and the Law of Evidence. He has taught both undergraduate and postgraduate students in these fields since 1989.
Amupitan’s nomination approval was disclosed in a statement by the Special Assistant to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, on Thursday.
According to the statement, President Tinubu presented Professor Amupitan to fill the vacant position following Professor Mahmood Yakubu’s exit after serving from 2015 till October 2025.
Across Israeli society, the reaction to the news of a Gaza ceasefire deal has been almost uniform: Joy.
In Tel Aviv, the families of those taken captive during the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023 celebrated on Thursday after the announcement. And a man dressed as United States President Donald Trump – who played a large part in brokering the deal – carried Israeli and US flags and posed for photographs with smiling passersby.
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Two years of war on Gaza have fractured Israeli society. The minority who have openly opposed Israel’s killing of more than 67,000 Palestinians say they have been ostracised, while those who cheered on what experts have confirmed is a genocide have been left angered by growing international condemnation of Israel’s aggression.
“I cried when I got the news,” Israeli political analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg said from Berlin. “It’s really big. It’s like there’s a complete emotional unravelling across Israel; it’s like people are decompressing. There’s just massive, massive relief.”
For some, the news seems too good to be true, with speculation and nerves turning to how the ceasefire may ultimately unravel, as a deal earlier this year did.
“Everyone is happy. It’s what we’ve been calling for for two years,” said Aida Touma-Suleiman, a member of parliament from the left-wing Hadash-Ta’al party. “I’ve been watching videos from Gaza, television from Tel Aviv showing the families of the hostages: Everyone is happy.
“Though there’s still caution,” she added. “There’s a feeling that someone, somewhere will find a reason to return to the war. People don’t trust this government – not just in Gaza, but in Israel, too.”
Much of that doubt centres on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has previously resisted calls to end the war at every opportunity.
Accusations from political opponents and captives’ families that he was prolonging the conflict for his own political ends – to ensure that his coalition holds together – have persisted throughout the war. Former US President Joe Biden also suggested that may be the case.
Today’s ceasefire does little to remove that suspicion. Netanyahu still faces the prospect of a verdict in his long-running corruption trial, an inquiry into his own failings before the October 7 attack, as well as the controversy over extending Israel’s military draft to its ultra-Orthodox community, whose parties are an important part of Netanyahu’s governing coalition. All of these have been conveniently relegated to secondary concerns while the war on Gaza has continued, but that will change once the fighting ends.
Nevertheless, with elections due by next year, or potentially even earlier, Netanyahu has successes that he can point to, particularly in weakening the Iranian-backed “axis of resistance” in the wider region. Perhaps most notable were the 12-day war with Iran in June, and the decapitation of much of the Lebanese group Hezbollah’s leadership in a war last year.
“Netanyahu is going to portray this as a victory,” the prime minister’s former aide and political pollster, Mitchell Barak, told Al Jazeera from West Jerusalem. “He can say he’s achieved everything he wanted to at the start of the war. He’s got the hostages back, he’s destroyed Hamas. On the sidelines of this, he’ll also claim that he used the opportunity to wipe out Hezbollah, weaken Iran and watch over as the Syrian regime fell. He’s reshaped the Middle East, he’ll claim, and removed many, if not all, of the main threats facing Israel.”
Others in Netanyahu’s far-right coalition already appear ready to oppose the deal. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have voiced hostility to the ceasefire, and have previously pledged to leave the government if a deal is passed that they do not agree with. However, what meaningful resistance they can muster – with Israel’s political opposition already pledging to support the government to secure the deal – is unclear.
“Hadash and the so-called opposition have all said they’ll support the ceasefire,” Touma-Suleiman said of a mainstream opposition that has, through the last two years, largely backed Israel’s actions in Gaza. “Ben-Gvir and Smotrich will make some noise, but they can’t really do much.”
How much the Israeli public credits Netanyahu, as opposed to Trump, for the ceasefire is unclear.
The US has been Israel’s staunchest ally amid international criticism of its actions in Gaza. In addition to its blanket backing at the United Nations, reports from Brown University’s Costs of War Project released this week confirmed what many long suspected: That the US treasury largely financed Israel’s war on Gaza and its attacks across the region.
However, for many Israelis, Israel’s failed strike on Hamas negotiators in Qatar and the unified response from Arab states proved a turning point for the US administration and its priorities within the Middle East, and ultimately led to Trump telling Netanyahu that he had to agree to a deal and end the war.
“I think Trump, allied with this coalition of Muslim and Arab states such as Turkiye and Qatar, probably succeeded in forcing the Israeli government’s hand,” Flashenberg said. “This could have been reached earlier, which suggests Trump forced it.”
“Netanyahu has to complete the first stage,” Touma-Suleiman said of the loosely worded ceasefire plan. “We know that, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about the second phase.
“That’s still to be negotiated – and on Israel’s side, those negotiations are going to be led by a government that is probably looking to restart the war.”
However, any effort to resume hostilities would unfold against the backdrop of an unpredictable US president who, having sent his special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner to negotiate the ceasefire, appears heavily invested in the process.
“How long this will last depends on Trump,” Barak said. “He uses the presidency as a global bully pulpit. He’s shown he’s ready to do anything, irrespective of the norms, as he writes his own rulebook with new norms.
“Israel has always been a critical ally of the US in the Middle East, as well as its most favoured nation, but it’s not really clear any more if Trump particularly cares about critical allies or favoured nations, or even foreign allies in general,” Barak continued. “He wants peace, and Netanyahu knows that. He knows Trump could really leave him – and that would be a disaster.
Claudia Winkleman has revealed why she can’t stand up straight. The TV presenter, who is hosting the first ever Celebrity Traitors after the storming success of the original, candidly spoke about the long-term health issues she suffers from, earlier this year.
The presenter went as far to say that the problems she faces has left her feeling like she’s “falling apart”.
Discussing her posture, Claudia said that her stance has always been “like a turtle”. Elaborating further in a chat with Gabby Logan on The Mid.Point podcast, The Traitors host said she was finally working on correcting her posture with the help of a trainer.
“My body is made entirely of crepe,” she shared. “[I’m] falling apart. I’ve got a bad back and I need some form of strength. You know what I mean? I’ve got my core.
“They talked to me about parts of my body. They said, ‘The problem is you’ve never used your lats’.
“I was like, ‘What is that?’. Apparently, so my shoulders are up by my neck. I’m always like (demonstrates her posture).
“And I don’t like the look of people standing up straight. It feels somehow cocky, so my stance has always been like a turtle.”
‘Lats’ is short for the latissimus dorsi muscle, one of the largest muscles in the back. Pilates can help improve major muscle groups, posture, flexibility, strength, balance and body awareness.
Claudia continued: “I’ve now got so many backbones. So I go to Pilates and they try and open me up.
“When they do open me up and I sit or stand like I’m supposed to, like that, I mean, it feels alien.” In the same podcast, Claudia also gave an update on her long-standing eye condition.
The Strictly Come Dancing presenter has also been open about her battle with myopia.
According to the NHS this is defined as a common condition that causes distant objects to appear blurred, but it can be corrected with glasses or contact lenses.
Also known as short-sightedness, Claudia opened up about her battles with the condition.
She admitted it’s led to blunders like bumping into walls and struggles with driving and reading. Despite undergoing two eye surgeries, she still grapples with challenges.
Although she battles particularly when it comes to reading, thankfully she has glasses specifically designed for her needs.
She shared: “Because I was so short-sighted, by them fixing it, I’m not long-sighted, so I can’t really read anymore. I can with glasses, I’ve got 2.5.”
A government spokesperson has laid out how Israel will implement the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s peace plan in Gaza, saying it will start after today’s Israeli government cabinet meeting.