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BERLIN (AP) — A problem with a communications system forced Germany’s railway network to halt all trains late Tuesday, leaving passengers stranded across the country.

Trains were held at stations and would-be travelers stood in long lines at information desks as they tried to figure out how to get to their destinations.

The main national railway operator, Deutsche Bahn, said shortly before 1 a.m. — nearly 2 1/2 hours after it first reported the outage — that the problem had been resolved and service was resuming “step by step.”

The company said there was a nationwide problem with the GSM-R digital communication system, which is used for internal communication on the railway network. It later said that the cause had been identified, but didn’t specify what it was.

The Bild newspaper quoted Deutsche Bahn CEO Evelyn Palla as saying that they “were able to stabilize the situation with an emergency system.”

Deutsche Bahn said during the outage that it was giving taxi and hotel vouchers to passengers and, where possible, making available trains at stations for travelers to sit in. It apologized for the situation.

At Berlin’s central station, Reyna Ghoshal and a friend were trying to get back to Munich after a trip to the German capital and saw “unhappy faces” as they arrived at the station.

“The train conductor was very nice, but he was just like, ‘we don’t know,’” said Ghoshal, who is from Atlanta. She said that “we booked a bus for 8 a.m. just in case, but generally we don’t know what’s going on.”

In recent years, complaints about train delays and disruption in Germany have become increasingly frequent.

Government-owned Deutsche Bahn has started conducting thorough but disruptive overhauls of major routes after years of underinvestment in a bid to improve its performance.

The German railway system has on rare occasions in the past halted all or most trains, but because of storms rather than for technical reasons.

GSM-R, short for Global System for Mobile Communications–Railway, offers voice and data services needed to operate railways, including communication between train drivers and control centers.

According to the European Union Agency for Railways, it has been introduced across Europe since 2000 as a common standard for railway operations.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. official told The Associated Press on Tuesday that one of Anthropic’s artificial intelligence models had identified vulnerabilities in highly sensitive and secure U.S. government computer systems during a testing exercise.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter, said Anthropic had teamed up with U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct tests using the company’s Mythos model. It had identified certain vulnerabilities within hours, but that does not mean the model was able to exploit them within that time, the official said.

The official said the testing was done through an Anthropic initiative called Project Glasswing, which brought together tech giants and other companies in hopes of securing the world’s critical software from “severe” fallout that the Mythos model could pose to public safety, national security and the economy.

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia had briefly mentioned the testing during a June 11 hearing before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. Warner had said, “This tool broke into almost all of our classified systems, not in weeks but in hours.” He attributed the information to the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, who is Gen. Joshua Rudd.

The NSA declined to comment on the matter in an email. An Anthropic spokesman also declined to comment.

Despite the recent cooperation between Anthropic and U.S. agencies to test for vulnerabilities, tensions between the California company and the Trump administration have been growing. Anthropic has raised concerns over how the U.S. military would use its AI, while the administration has restricted the use of some of Anthropic’s models.

The administration issued a directive earlier this month requiring Anthropic to prevent foreign nationals from using its latest artificial intelligence models, known as Fable 5 and Mythos 5. Anthropic released Fable widely earlier this month. That model is a limited version of the more advanced Mythos, to which the company has tightly limited access due to cybersecurity fears.

The directive came 10 days after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to establish a framework for the federal government to vet the national security risks of the most advanced AI systems for up to a month before their public release. Participation by AI developers would be voluntary, the order said.

Anthropic said it disabled the models for all of its customers to comply with the administration’s directive. The AI giant said it did not believe the steps taken by the government were warranted by the concern it flagged about a potential security issue.

A group of cybersecurity executives has also asked the Trump administration to lift its directive, saying the move could help U.S. adversaries more than it hurts them. More than 100 cybersecurity experts and leaders from companies including Adobe and Nvidia told the government in a letter that Anthropic’s Mythos models are “quite good” at finding flaws in software and weaponizing exploits — but they are ”not uniquely good at these tasks.”

Many of the letter’s signatories said they regularly use other foundation and open-source models for security audits and training. The letter said it is dangerous to take away the best cyber defense capabilities “without a good reason” when America’s adversaries are rapidly advancing.

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By Ernest Scheyder

LAS VEGAS, June 23 (Reuters) – Rio Tinto. expects its lithium business to grow faster than its copper, iron ore and other divisions as it works to triple production by 2028 for the electric vehicle and battery storage markets, an executive said on Tuesday.

The world’s second-largest mining company jumped into the lithium sector last year when it bought U.S.-based Arcadium, a deal that brought access to mines, processing facilities and deposits across four continents, as well as a customer base that includes Tesla.

Rio has been integrating those assets amid a lithium price crash caused in part by Chinese oversupply, a market malaise that forced a wave of industry layoffs and has only begun to abate in recent months.

Rio is now working to open mines in Argentina and Canada that it believes can be economical should prices drop again, Jérôme Pécresse, head of the company’s aluminum and lithium business unit, told Reuters on the sidelines of the Fastmarkets Global Lithium, Battery and Critical Materials Conference in Las Vegas.

The company plans to produce at least 61,000 metric tons of lithium this year and have the capacity to produce 200,000 metric tons by 2028, should the market demand it.

“We want to show that we can build on time and on budget,” said Pécresse, a former General Electric executive who joined Rio in 2023. “That’s taking up 90% of my time.”

He stressed that Rio aims to only bring online low-cost assets to supply customers that want long-term contracts, many of which have price floors and ceilings to protect both miner and buyer.

Still, he acknowledged that the lithium market is in a growth phase compared to other major global commodities, a reality borne out by lithium’s rapid transformation from a niche material to a high-demand economic building block.

“It’s a market that is trying to find itself, in a way,” he said.

Pécresse, who sits on Rio’s executive committee, declined to comment on any potential merger aspirations between Rio and Glencore, citing a six-month standstill regulation that expires in August.

NEW TECH

Much of Rio’s growth will come from the company’s investment in direct lithium extraction, which was a key reason for the Arcadium buyout.

Pécresse said he expects one of Rio’s DLE projects to launch within a few years. He added that Rio is not currently eyeing buyouts of other lithium projects.

“We’re pretty happy with the Arcadium assets,” said Pécresse, who noted that he personally drives a hybrid vehicle. “We have a clear roadmap to get to 200,000 (metric tons per year of production) by 2028.”

While the Arcadium buyout and that growth could make Rio one of the world’s largest producers of the battery metal, Pécresse said that is not his goal. Albemarle is the top global producer.

“We don’t have a strategy to be number one or, say, number three,” he said. “Our strategy is to have a set of assets that are big enough to give us relevance with customers.”

(Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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June 23 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday that the Trump administration aimed to build enough supply chain capacity to allow critical industries to withstand economic shocks, pandemics, wars, coercion from adversaries and other foreign chokepoints.

Bessent told the Economic Club of New York that supply chain resilience “does not require every component to be domestic from beginning to end. That would be unrealistic and unnecessary.”

But in a speech invoking Alexander Hamilton’s call for a newly independent United States to develop manufacturing self-sufficiency, Bessent said supply chain security “requires diversifying away from dangerous concentrations. And that we build enough capacity at home to ensure that the American people are never at the mercy of a foreign chokepoint abroad.”

Bessent also said that, after decades of growing trade deficits, the U.S. was a nation now more aware of its economic interests, and more prepared to protect them.

Partner countries should expect “a nation that insists on reciprocity. That shields its firms from discriminatory treatment. Secures its critical supply chains. Enforces sanctions and combats illicit finance,” Bessent said. “A United States, in short, that will not allow economic policy to grow detached from national strategy.”

Bessent also said the U.S. should support financial innovation that strengthens the dollar, improves efficiency, expands access and preserves the integrity of the financial system, but he did not outline any specific policies to achieve that. He added that the U.S. would insist that new technologies meet U.S. standards for transparency, security, consumer protection and law enforcement access.

(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Edmund Klamann)

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An important job in the two or so years leading up to retirement—right up there with figuring out your healthcare coverage and winding down your work activities—is building up a cash cushion. In addition to being there as a source of funding when you eventually retire, cash has the salutary effect of providing a buffer if  you retire earlier than you expected  due to unforeseen circumstances.

As you build out your Bucket portfolio, here’s some guidance on the amount, source, and location of those liquid reserves.

Your cash bucket should consist of one to two years’ worth of portfolio withdrawals, not living expenses. That’s because at least some of your living expenses will likely be coming from outside your portfolio— Social Security or a pension, for example. And the composition of those cash flow sources may well change throughout your retirement.

To set up your Bucket 1 initially, think through your cash flow sources for the first few years of retirement. Let’s say a 66-year-old wants to retire in two years and expects that he’ll need to spend $80,000 per year, in total, from his $1.5 million portfolio, at that time. He wants to delay filing for Social Security until age 70, so all of his spending will come from his portfolio in those first few years of retirement. After that, roughly half his spending needs will come from Social Security.

If he wanted to be conservative, he could build a cash cushion consisting of $160,000—his years 1 and 2 portfolio withdrawals. His Bucket 2—high-quality bonds—would consist of eight years’ worth of portfolio withdrawals, which at that point will be $40,000 per year (his $80,000 total spending less Social Security income). The remaining $1 million and change could go into a globally diversified equity portfolio.

In addition to thinking through the size of your liquid reserves bucket, it’s also worth considering the “where” of it. Will you hold cash in your taxable accounts, tax-sheltered accounts, or some in both? To help answer that question, you need to consider your  sequence of withdrawals in retirement.

Taxable accounts are often first in the queue for retirement withdrawals because their ongoing tax costs are higher than those of tax-sheltered accounts. (In a taxable account, you enjoy long-term capital gains tax treatment on the sale of appreciated winners you’ve held for more than a year, but ordinary income is dunned at your higher ordinary income tax rate.) But some retirees may benefit from spending from their tax-deferred accounts early in retirement, with an eye toward reducing future required minimum distributions and tax bills. This is a good spot to get advice from a financial or tax adviser. Armed with the knowledge of where you’ll turn for your spending in the first part of your retirement, you can then figure out where best to hold your liquid reserves.

Once you’ve determined how much of a cash bucket you plan to set aside and where you’ll hold it, the next step is figuring out how to build it up. Ideally, you’d give yourself a couple of years to enlarge your cash position rather than having to find the money just before retirement. Many people moving into retirement will have a few options.

Additional savings: For preretirees who are still saving, a logical way to begin bulking up cash is to direct new contributions into cash. Say, for example, the aforementioned retiree is making the maximum allowable 401(k) contribution of $32,500 and putting another $8,600 into an IRA. By directing two years’ worth of contributions to cash in those two accounts, he could arrive at nearly half his target cash allocation ($82,200 of his $160,000 target) by the time he reaches his retirement.

Bonuses and inheritances: If you’ve recently received a surprise cash injection, the assets are a logical source for bulking up cash reserves. They’re probably already in cash and in a taxable account.

Rebalancing: Trimming equities and adding those assets to cash and bonds provides a twofer for people closing in on retirement: It reduces risk and helps cover cash flows for the first few years of retirement. This kind of selling can trigger a tax bill, so get some tax advice and/or concentrate rebalancing in tax-sheltered accounts to lessen the impact.

Reducing risky positions: Even if your portfolio’s asset allocation doesn’t need adjusting, you may still have problematic holdings in your portfolio: the employer stock you know you should scale back on, the individual-stock portfolio that’s duplicative of what’s in your mutual funds, or the costly active fund that hasn’t earned its keep relative to an inexpensive exchange-traded fund. Such holdings can be ideal sources when building up your cash reserves, just mind the tax consequences if you’re selling them from a taxable account.

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This article was provided to The Associated Press by Morningstar. For more retirement content, go to https://www.morningstar.com/retirement.

Christine Benz is director of personal finance and retirement planning for Morningstar and co-host of The Long View podcast.

Related Links

The Portfolio That Has Been Beating the Classic 60/40, and Why It Matters for You

https://www.morningstar.com/portfolios/portfolio-that-has-been-beating-classic-6040-why-it-matters-you

Should You Make Roth or Traditional Retirement Plan Contributions? It Depends

https://www.morningstar.com/retirement/should-you-make-roth-or-traditional-retirement-plan-contributions-it-depends

Helping Widows and the Advisors Who Serve Them

https://www.morningstar.com/personal-finance/kathleen-rehl-helping-widows-advisors-who-serve-them

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By Mike Dolan

June 23 (Reuters) –

What matters in U.S. and global markets today

By Mike Dolan, Editor-at-Large, Finance and Markets

Big Tech started the week in reverse, with megacaps Alphabet and Amazon each falling around 5% on Monday, dragged down by a mix of concerns: interest rate expectations, lofty AI spending and rising debt.

Even SpaceX, which commenced debt-raising plans of its own on Monday, clocked its biggest loss since its IPO, dropping some 16%.

I’ll get into that and more below.

But first, check out my latest column on why Britain’s next government must really deliver – or risk more political volatility and economic woe.

And listen to the latest episode of the Morning Bid daily podcast. Subscribe to hear Reuters journalists discuss the biggest news in markets and finance seven days a week.

SPACEXHAUST

Stumbling megacaps dragged the S&P 500 and Nasdaq lower on Monday, though chipmakers did much better, ahead of memory chipmaker Micron’s results due out Wednesday. A recent theme seemed to play out again: buying stocks that benefit from the AI spending splurge and selling those doing all the spending.

However, the hawkish Fed interest rate outlook weighed on stocks at large, with a rate hike now fully priced in for September and a more than 50% chance of two by year-end.

Tech stocks around the world fell overnight in the slipstream, with South Korea’s high-flying KOSPI index off nearly 10% on Tuesday, partly on warnings about the ongoing weakness of the Korean won. Stateside, Wall Street futures were in the red before the bell, with Nasdaq futures tumbling more than 2%.

Elsewhere, in currency markets, the yen continued to flirt with 40-year lows set two years ago, with Fed-fuelled dollar strength trumping the impact of last week’s Bank of Japan rate hike. There were reports of contact between Tokyo and Washington officials on the issue of yen stability, keeping intervention fears on the boil.

On the energy front, oil prices continued their slide under $80 per barrel, with Brent crude trading at around $77/bbl early on Tuesday. That came amid more signs of returning oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz and as the U.S. waived sanctions on Iran for 60 days on Monday after initial peace talks.

In Europe, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s resignation on Monday left UK markets relatively unperturbed. Focus is now shifting to how quickly his likely successor Andy Burnham can be appointed – and who Burnham might choose as finance minister.

The data slate for Tuesday will include the release of flash U.S. and global business surveys for June, though the big retreat in oil prices since last week’s U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding came after those polls were conducted.

Chart of the day

SpaceX stock has reversed all its initial trading gains since its IPO, falling below its first stock price print after a nearly 17% drop on Monday, as the company outlined debt-raising plans and other Big Tech megacaps also swooned.

The shares remained 14% higher than the $135 listing price on Monday, but they fell a further 2% in afterhours trading. The quick reversal will concern retail investors who pumped tens of millions of dollars into the stock last week, and it also threatens the company’s newfound $2 trillion market valuation.

Today’s events to watch

• U.S. June S&P Global PMIs (9:45 a.m. EDT)

• U.S. 2-year note auction (1 p.m. EDT)

Want to receive the Morning Bid in your inbox every weekday morning? Sign up for the newsletter here. You can find ROI on the Reuters website, and you can follow us on LinkedIn and X.

Opinions expressed are those of the author. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

(By Mike Dolan)

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Forty mayors from around the world have signed onto a pact announced Tuesday to try to shape how urban data centers are built and operated.

It’s their vision for how urban data center development can be done sustainably — and not at the expense of their cities’ natural resources, energy prices or climate targets. C40 Cities, an alliance of nearly 100 cities seeking to impact climate change, launched it during London Climate Action Week.

Many new data centers are coming to rural areas for cheap land. Experts at C40 say metropolitan areas are under tremendous pressure too, with about 1,700 data centers located in their network of cities so far. Development of data centers is expected to grow by over 40% in 50 of those cities.

C40 got involved because the mayors of Phoenix and Melbourne, Australia, came together over worries about data centers using a lot of their cities’ electricity and water, and competing with housing developers for available land.

“We found out that the challenges in every region around the world were very similar,” said Cassie Sutherland, a managing director at C40. “Our approach was to say OK, how do we now use a global mayoral voice to come together with the conditions under which they will accept data centers.”

Data centers are built in cities to be close to firms that want systems powered by artificial intelligence to respond instantaneously. Major companies locate data centers in cities to be near their business operations. And data centers tend to be built in clusters, forming ecosystems in metropolitan areas that might outweigh factors like land costs. It’s just more recently that data centers have moved out into rural areas, said Andrew Batson, global head of data center research at JLL.

Political and local opposition has been growing because of fears about blackouts, rising electricity bills and the centers’ voracious water needs. Some states are suspending tax breaks or considering moratoriums on data center construction.

About half of participating mayors are from the U.S. That includes Seattle and the California cities of Palo Alto and Riverside. In the Southwest, Phoenix and Albuquerque, New Mexico, joined. On the East Coast, Beverly, Massachusetts, signed, as did Lincoln, Nebraska; Chicago and Cleveland in the Midwest and Miami in the South.

European cities in Greece, Spain, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom and Norway joined, as did Montreal in Canada. The pact includes African cities in Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Kenya, as well as Asia-Pacific cities in India and Australia, and Lebanon in the Middle East.

Sutherland said their vision needs to be translated into action, with each city using it as a framework for their own regulations or guidelines. Mayors are limited in what they can do unilaterally, so they’ll need buy-in from other government officials, utilities and the private sector.

The pact lists several standards for data center developments. Urban data centers should be built on abandoned or underutilized land in an area that minimizes negative impacts on noise, heat and air pollution. Developments should be fueled by renewable energy and battery storage, and data centers should reduce water use and emissions, as well as capture waste heat.

And, the mayors want data centers that create jobs, buy local goods and services, pay for their own infrastructure upgrades and listen to community feedback.

The Phoenix metropolitan area has pending permit requests that would double the electricity demand if all of these data centers were built. Developers are drawn there for its reliable power and predictable weather.

Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said she’s concerned that investments in data centers right now are worsening climate change and not meeting the needs of communities. Mayors are forming a unified front to help improve data centers everywhere — that will keep developers from simply looking for communities unable to advocate for their own benefits, she added.

“We understand the importance of this innovation, it’s creating great jobs in our community,” Gallego said. “We just want to make sure that we get it right for our local residents and for the health of our planet.”

As of Tuesday, none of Southeast Asia’s cities endorsed the pact. Several said they couldn’t because of national policies or other complications, but the conversations are ongoing, C40 said.

The region accounts for a quarter of global energy demand growth, partially driven by more than 2,000 data centers in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, according to the think tank Ember.

The annual energy demand from these data centers will more than double in the next five years, the International Energy Agency said. This is most evident in Malaysia, which has drawn investments and interest from tech giants like Microsoft, Google and Nvidia.

If Melbourne follows through on all its plans, data centers will annually consume up to 20 billion liters (5.3 billion gallons) worth of water, or about 4% of the drinking water supply, according to the city’s Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece.

The water supply is already strained by the growing population, longer dry periods and more extreme heat driven by climate change.

Melbourne played a key role in the pact. Reece said stricter environmental regulations there likely won’t threaten future plans. Ultimately, he said, data centers are going to go where there’s enough power and land, and where they’re close to the markets and companies using artificial intelligence.

“We don’t want to see a race to the bottom between cities where governments, desperate for investment, are chasing data centers on any terms possible,” he said. “We want to see a better framework in place so that the investment rush in data centers can be a win-win — a win for investors and also a win for local communities.”

___

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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Marie Lansley recently started a new job in a new city while searching for a new partner. In her dating pursuits, the freshly minted San Franciscan said she’s been “trying everything”— including some help from artificial intelligence.

AI chatbots have become — for her and many others — de facto dating coaches and relationship experts.

Lansley, 36, consults AI chatbots for help in starting conversations, something she said she finds difficult on dating apps despite being comfortable doing so in person. Although she’s optimistic about the possibilities, she acknowledges the incongruency between the art of romance and the precision of technology.

“I am open to AI finding me the love of my life, but I’m also not fully convinced that it can,” Lansley said. “AI is great at making dating more efficient. But the chemistry — that’s always going to be analog.”

AI adopters have been using the tech in varied ways to find romance. Some patronize AI matchmaking services. Others use AI tools to help build their dating profiles. But the most common way is enlisting chatbots to draft messages to potential matches and interpret messages they receive.

Lansley goes back and forth between OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. Others turn to Elon Musk and X’s Grok, Google’s Gemini and other chatbots. Dating apps and AI companies are leaning into it. ChatGPT and Gemini have posted content on TikTok showcasing their chatbots’ customized, personality-laden relationship advice.

“Claude is the new Cyrano,” said dating coach Carey Gaynes, referencing the 19th century French play “Cyrano de Bergerac” in which the titular character is the brains behind another man’s romantic words.

“You’re using a voice that isn’t yours.”

Gaynes said she has heard of daters of all ages turning to the technology, both from her client base and her following on her YouTube channel, Coffee with Carey. She sees how it could be useful in dating, but like many others, she worries about overreliance.

Like the platitude used to describe many a modern dating arrangement, it’s complicated when it comes to people’s feelings about AI’s role in romance. There’s a range of excitement, resistance and skepticism.

Lansley said she has been startled by how chatbots can appear to display emotional intelligence.

When doing an onboarding call with the AI matchmaker on the app Known, she said the questions the bot asked went “one or two levels deeper” than traditional dating app questions and it seemed to be striving for empathy.

It doesn’t necessarily lead to better results — her first match was not a perfect fit.

Mason Naung, a 25-year-old student in Los Angeles, said he doesn’t use chatbots for message ideas, but could see the benefit of it for “icebreakers” during the early back-and-forth with someone.

“I’ve been on Hinge on and off for a year or two, and sometimes I kind of struggle to think about what the opening line should be like with this girl, right?” he said. But if the AI-written messages go beyond those initial exchanges, that would be a “small red flag” in his mind.

Just as chatbots can help start conversations, they also can help end things. Dani Cohen, a 27-year-old business owner in San Diego, said she would much rather be sent an AI-written farewell message by someone she’s been on a few dates with than be “ghosted,” or cut off without a word.

“Obviously, in a perfect world, everyone knows exactly what they want to say and how to say it in the kindest way possible and they do that. That’s not the world we live in,” she said. “Anything to get people to communicate, and to communicate their thoughts kindly and effectively, is great.”

Several people who spoke with The Associated Press, including those who have turned to AI for dating help, expressed reservations about using the technology to help with deeply personal aspects of their life. Many adopters said they had a line they wouldn’t cross when it would be inappropriate to use AI for dating.

Others couldn’t dream of turning to a chatbot for help with their love life at all.

Clara Sullivan, a 22-year-old student in Los Angeles, said she would not reply to a potential partner if she knew they were sending her AI-written messages.

“I think it’s really scary how reliant people are on it,” Sullivan said. “It’s completely gotten rid of people’s ability to think creatively and on their own.”

Many feel the same way. A 2025 survey from the Pew Research Center found 53% of U.S. adults say AI will worsen people’s ability to think creatively. Half of those polled said they feel AI will worsen people’s ability to form meaningful relationships.

Still, the marriage of AI with the highly lucrative dating industry was likely inescapable. Many dating apps have been integrating AI into their platforms for years.

Tinder has an AI-powered feature called Chemistry that suggests profiles tailored to a user’s interests. Hinge has AI-powered conversation starters and feedback tools to help build users’ profiles and make interactions smooth.

The founder of the app Bumble recently said the platform will soon ditch the well-known swipe feature, instead pivoting toward AI-driven matchmaking. After facing some backlash to the decision, Bumble CEO and founder Whitney Wolfe Herd wrote in a statement that said what they’re building “is rooted in a simple belief: technology should make love and connection feel more human, not less.”

Mohammed Nizami, 23, said he turns to AI for some things in his life, but not his dating pursuits.

“We’re all craving for some degree of authentic connection. Certainly with your partner, you want that,” he said. “If there’s some filter or barrier between you and your partner or potential partner, I think that’s just not a great way to start a relationship.”

Nizami said chatbots may not even provide the best guidance. The sycophantic nature of many chatbots, he said, might be “good for your own mental comfort” but does not necessarily lead to the soundest advice.

AI is likely going to play a growing role in modern dating life, despite the hesitations.

“It’s kind of a sad commentary on the state of the world. Dating is supposed to be one of the things that cannot be replaced, right?” said Jake Clay, a 30-year-old content creator in New York City. “It’s kind of sad to think that something so pivotal to your life journey is being outsourced to an AI who can’t understand the emotions around it.”

Clay did say he’s been receiving fewer texts from friends asking him to decode a message from potential partners, as they now turn to chatbots.

Clay wryly said he appreciates AI “lifting the load” there but also called the situation a “Catch-22” since it’s “circumventing some of the normal processes in life that I feel like should be a little bit more sacred.”

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June 23 (Reuters) – CopperTech Metals is targeting a valuation of up to $3.57 billion in its U.S. initial public offering, joining a wave of companies tapping the busy summer IPO market.

The U.S.-domiciled copper and cobalt producer is seeking up to $423.5 million by offering 23.5 million shares priced between $16 and $18 apiece, it said on Tuesday.

The IPO market has picked up pace after a brief lull in March as buoyant stock markets and strong investor appetite have created a more favorable backdrop for new listings.

E-bike startup Lime, silver miner Sinda, digital infrastructure firm ITG, and Italian technology firm Bending Spoons also launched their U.S. IPOs this week.

Vedanta Resources, owned by Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal, launched CopperTech Metals last year. CopperTech owns and operates Konkola Copper Mines in Zambia’s Copperbelt province.

The offering comes as CopperTech plans to spend $2.7 billion over the next five fiscal years to ramp up copper production at Konkola to an average of roughly 270 kilotonnes per annum from fiscal 2030.

Demand for copper is surging, underpinned by the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure, grid modernization and electrification.

Vedanta has invested over $3 billion in Konkola and held majority ownership since 2004. The firm regained control of Konkola in July 2024 after the asset was seized by Zambia’s previous administration of former president Edgar Lungu in 2019.

Konkola is 79.4% owned by CopperTech, while Zambia’s ZCCM Investment owns the rest.

Citigroup and Cantor are joint book-running managers. CopperTech will list on the NYSE under the symbol “CUX.”

(Reporting by Arasu Kannagi Basil in Bengaluru; Editing by Diti Pujara and Tasim Zahid)

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June 22 (Reuters) – Oracle’s total workforce declined 13%, or about 21,000 employees in fiscal 2026, as the cloud computing giant continued restructuring its business, partly driven by the adoption of AI across its operations.

The company had a total workforce of 141,000 as of May 31, 2026, compared with about 162,000 as of the same period last year, according to its annual report released on Monday.

Oracle spent $1.84 billion in severance payments and other exit costs related to the restructuring activities in fiscal 2026, significantly higher than the $374 million spent in the previous fiscal year, the filing showed.

It also said in its filing that the workforce adjustments were in response to various factors, including management and product changes, performance issues, strategic shifts and acquisitions.

The decline in the workforce follows multiple reports earlier this year about Oracle cutting thousands of jobs. The company did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Worries are quickly mounting over job losses due to AI disruption, as 196 tech companies laid off more than 119,800 employees so far this year, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website tracking sector-wide job cuts.

(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva)

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