Politics Health Country 2025-11-10T13:25:00+00:00

FBI Director Visited China to Discuss Fentanyl

FBI Director Kash Patel secretly visited Beijing for talks on fentanyl and law enforcement. China responded by tightening controls on chemical precursors, while the US reduced tariffs.


FBI Director Visited China to Discuss Fentanyl

Last week, FBI Director Kash Patel visited China to discuss fentanyl and law enforcement issues, reportedly holding talks with Chinese officials. Patel's visit to Beijing was not officially announced by either the United States or China and was reported on Monday by Reuters. A source familiar with the trip said the official arrived in the city on Friday and stayed for about a day. Meanwhile, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Monday he was unaware of the trip, while China's Ministry of Public Security and the U.S. Embassy in Beijing did not respond to requests for comment. The agency reported that on the same day, China announced it would adjust the catalog of chemical precursors related to drugs and require licenses for the export of certain chemicals to the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It also noted that antidrug authorities had stepped up oversight of the production and export of chemicals used to make drugs not on its control list to prevent them from reaching illegal channels, according to a statement. In turn, Donald Trump reduced tariffs on Chinese goods imposed as punishment for the flow of fentanyl to 10% after reaching an agreement during last month's talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Xi will work 'very hard to stop the flow' of fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid that is the leading cause of overdose deaths in the United States, Trump told reporters after the talks.

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AI Wave of Layoffs Threatens One in Four Jobs
2025-11-10T07:36:21+00:00

AI Wave of Layoffs Threatens One in Four Jobs

Washington, Nov 10 (EFE). — The threat of generative artificial intelligence (AI) as a wave of mass replacement of jobs is already a reality. While the organization bets more on the transformation of jobs, not their complete replacement, various studies also forecast the possible creation of a pool of jobs focused on the management, development, and supervision of AI, which will require the continuous training of workers. Up to 30,000 layoffs at Amazon and 600 at Meta Despite the report from the ILO betting more on job transformation, several layoffs have already been recorded in large companies due to the advancement of artificial intelligence. The US social media giant Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, announced that it plans to cut about 600 jobs due to automation and the integration of more advanced AI systems into the company's operations. Meanwhile, Amazon announced a cut of up to 30,000 employees, the largest in the company's history. The company will lay off 10% of its workforce, as explained by the CNBC network based on sources close to the matter. Several media outlets picked up a statement from Amazon's CEO, Andy Jassy, in which he stated that as the company expands the role of AI in its environment, it will need fewer employees to carry out the same functions. A few months ago, the microprocessor manufacturer Intel announced that throughout this year it will lay off about 25,000 more workers in an attempt to advance the integration of AI into the company. Photo EFE The post The integration of AI triggers thousands of layoffs and threatens a quarter of jobs was first published in La Verdad Panamá. Thousands of employees at tech giants like Amazon and Meta have seen how the development of this tool has ended up absorbing tasks that until a few years ago were unthinkable to not be performed by humans. The increasingly solid emergence of AI and the subsequent acceleration of some processes thanks to this tool is causing a labor revolution in which several large companies, especially tech ones, are laying off workers and mechanizing their tasks through artificial intelligence. In the United States, the rise of AI has been responsible for 31,039 layoffs just in October, according to a report from the firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas due to the lack of official data from the federal government shutdown. The study points out the growing presence of artificial intelligence in the workplace and its integration into corporate structures as the second biggest factor for layoffs in the country, second only to cost reduction. So far this year, according to this report, AI has been cited as the cause of 48,414 cuts. One in four jobs, threatened A few months ago, a joint study by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the National Research Institute of Poland (NASK) concluded that one in four jobs is at risk of transformation due to the rise of artificial intelligence. In high-income countries, this number rises to 34%. Administrative-type positions are particularly highlighted, although the ILO also pointed to certain highly digitalized cognitive jobs in sectors such as media, software, and finance. However, the complete automation of employment remains limited according to this analysis, as there are many tasks that, despite being able to be performed more efficiently, require human intervention.