AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT

Trump returns to UN at a moment of anxiety about Iran, AI and the future of world body itself

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump is set to address the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday at a tumultuous moment for the world — and for his presidency.

The global economy has been shaken by his decision to launch a war against Iran. Anxiety about the social impact being wrought by artificial intelligence is surging. And questions linger about the future of the United Nations itself with Trump’s scaling back U.S. financial support for the United Nations.

After his speech to the annual gathering of world leaders, Trump is expected to hold talks with new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and a more informal meeting with Venezuela’s acting president Delcy Rodríguez, according to the White House.

He’s also set to meet with leaders and senior officials from Gulf Cooperation Council nations — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates — to discuss the way ahead with the war in Iran and growing concern about recent Iran-backed rebels attacks on Saudi Arabia.

The visit to the U.N. comes at a moment when Trump’s foreign policy approach — particularly his decision to start a war with Iran — has become a drag on his fellow Republicans’ hopes of retaining control of both chambers of Congress during the coming midterm elections. Nevertheless, administration officials signaled Trump will make the case in his address that the world is better off for his leadership.

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Messy, troubled, unpredictable: Diplomats describe a world in turmoil as UN opens annual meeting

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — There is not much that diplomats can agree on these days. But if asked about the state of the world ahead of the annual meeting at the U.N. General Assembly, heads of state and government and ministers alike will describe a globe in massive turmoil.

With two escalating wars raging in Europe and the Middle East, a global economy in flux, and a shifting world order, international leaders are arriving in New York on Tuesday to an outlook that is massively different from this time last year.

“World leaders will be gathering at the United Nations in an era of deep uncertainty,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told reporters recently. “At the same time, power is shifting. The world is changing. And our institutions must change with it.”

The last nine months alone saw the audacious U.S. military operation that plucked Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro from power before a deadly crackdown took place in Iran after tens of thousands of pro-government demonstrators took to the streets to challenge the country’s theocracy. Shortly after, the U.S. and Israel launched a joint attack against Tehran, kicking off an ongoing and spiraling conflict, now involving nearly every country in the region, which has since resulted in the effective closure of a critical waterway.

Meanwhile, the more than four-year war between Russia and Ukraine shows no end in sight as both sides have only ramped up military attacks in recent days while numerous diplomatic efforts to end the conflict have failed to break through.

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Russia and Ukraine trade deadly strikes as Zelenskyy prepares to meet Trump

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia bombarded at least four Ukrainian regions overnight with missiles and drones, killing four people, officials said Tuesday, and Ukraine’s forces damaged another Russian oil refinery in their latest long-range strike.

The ongoing exchange of daily aerial attacks, while positions on the battlefield’s front line barely change, provided a backdrop to the visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the United States.

Zelenskyy was due to meet other world leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump, at the U.N. General Assembly in New York. The Ukrainian leader is hoping to recruit their help to end Russia’s more than 4 1/2-year-old full-scale invasion of his country.

Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t due to attend the annual event.

The war, which Western officials say has killed more than 500,000 Russian troops, has had global repercussions.

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UK to offer Saudi Arabia aerial refueling to counter Houthi attacks

ABOARD THE BRITISH PRIME MINISTER’S PLANE (AP) — Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Monday that Britain has agreed to provide limited military support to Saudi Arabia to repel attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Burnham told reporters as he flew to the United Nations General Assembly in New York that he had agreed the Royal Air Force will provide air-to-air refueling of Saudi planes. The agreement is for a matter of weeks, but Burnham said it will be kept under review.

The conflict between the Houthis and Yemen’s Saudi-backed government has reignited, with the Houthis aiming missile and drone strikes at Saudi Arabia, including one that targeted Riyadh on Saturday before being intercepted. The Houthis also declared a blockade on Saudi shipping in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea, attacking Saudi-linked vessels and oil facilities inside the kingdom, the world’s top oil exporter.

The Houthis advanced inside Yemen earlier this month, seizing the crucial port city of Mokha and key Red Sea islands allowing them to better monitor shipping traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb, through which some 12% of world trade normally passes.

Burnham said he was “acting to secure the interests of Britain and the wider region” at a moment when Saudi Arabia is facing attacks and it is critical to keep passages for oil open.

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China’s Alibaba unveils new powerful chip and ambitious AI model plans

HONG KONG (AP) — China’s Alibaba unveiled new artificial intelligence chip technologies and plans for more powerful models on Tuesday, including what it said was China’s most powerful AI chip, days ahead of a meeting between Chinese and U.S. leaders at which competition to lead on AI technology is expected to be a major theme.

Alibaba’s announcement came as U.S. AI leaders, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, are warning that China’s development of AI poses a threat to the United States and calling for an overall slowdown on development of the technology.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is set to arrive in Washington on Wednesday for a state visit and meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, at which AI, trade and tariffs are expected to be discussed.

At its annual flagship conference in Hangzhou, Alibaba rolled out a new AI chip and described its plans for the next generation of its AI model.

CEO Eddie Wu said the new Zhenwu V900 chip is the “most powerful AI chip in China today” and can deliver three times the performance of the company’s previous generation Zhenwu M890 chip.

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Trump and Xi see tensions flare over AI, trade and Iran but still seek stability

WASHINGTON (AP) — State visits usually occur when two countries are on warm terms, but U.S. President Donald Trump is hosting Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Washington this week as their economic and tech competition is only escalating, especially through an artificial intelligence race.

Neither expects any grand bargain, but the leaders are expected to play nice in their third meeting since Trump returned to the White House to try to steady fragile ties. That is despite the world’s two largest economies seeking the upper hand on AI developments and trade, while pushing for leverage in persistent hot spots like Iran and Taiwan.

“The fact that they are meeting, and there’s dialogue occurring and building that relationship, is probably as important as outcomes from the meeting,” said Sen. Steve Daines, a Montana Republican who advises Trump on China and recently traveled there to lay groundwork for the summit.

Cui Tiankai, a former Chinese ambassador to the U.S., said at a recent forum in Beijing that there are “always problems, sometimes very big problems” between the two countries, but “we’ll make our best efforts to maintain overall stability.”

Xi’s visit to Washington, which begins Wednesday, is his first in 10 years. He and Trump are meeting after their countries climbed down from last year’s intense trade war, where they traded tit-for-tat sky-high tariffs that threatened the global economy. China also choked off its world-leading supplies of critical minerals needed in products from electric cars to fighter jets.

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European Union strikes a new free trade deal with the Philippines

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union and the Philippines announced a new free trade deal on Tuesday in the latest bilateral agreement struck by Brussels as it seeks to diversify its economy as tensions persist with traditional trading partners including China, Russia and the United States.

The EU’s top trade negotiator, Maroš Šefčovič, said that he and Philippine Trade Secretary María Cristina Aldeguer-Roque structured the deal to grow the nearly 30 billion euros (around $35 billion) of annual trade between the 27-nation EU and the Southeast Asian nation of 115 million people.

“It also delivers stronger, more diversified supply chains at the moment when resilience has become a strategic priority,” Šefčovič said.

Trade is dominated by electronics, with the EU exporting aircraft, pork and pharmaceuticals while importing semiconductors, integrated circuits and industrial machinery manufactured in the Philippines.

The Philippines is the third nation from the ASEAN bloc after Vietnam and Singapore to sign a bilateral trade deal with the EU. Negotiations are ongoing between the European Commission and Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, while a larger free-trade agreement is hoped for in the long term between ASEAN itself and the EU.

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News outlets sue Trump over lost White House access, citing ‘blatant violation’ of First Amendment

NEW YORK (AP) — CNN, MS NOW and Politico on Monday sued President Donald Trump’s administration days after they were barred from White House grounds, calling the selective ban — based on the content of their coverage — a “blatant violation” of the First Amendment. Trump said on social media that he ”cherished” a free press but not “FAKE NEWS.”

“White House access is a privilege — not a right,” the administration posted on X.

The extraordinary ban of the three news outlets’ reporters, which began over the weekend, represented a clear escalation of Trump’s long-running efforts — in the courts and through administrative action — to restrict news coverage he finds objectionable. They were also the latest test of First Amendment protections in the United States, where the government is constitutionally forbidden from restricting the press.

The Constitution, the banned news outlets said in their lawsuit, “does not allow a president or any other government official to deprive the press of their First Amendment rights and liberty and property interests with no notice or process based solely on his dislike of the content of their reporting.”

The three outlets filed the joint lawsuit two days after their reporters were blocked from the White House and prevented from doing their jobs. The reporters’ entry badges were disabled Saturday, a day after Trump had suddenly announced he was barring the outlets because of reporting he considered “fake news.”

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States settle lawsuit over Paramount-Warner merger, clearing key hurdle for $81 billion deal

CHICAGO (AP) — Twelve states and Hollywood writers challenging Paramount’s buyout of Warner Bros. Discovery agreed to settle their lawsuits on Monday, effectively paving the way for the $81 billion mega merger to cross the finish line, with some new commitments from the company.

The blockbuster deal will still vastly reshape Hollywood — bringing together two of the “big five” remaining studios, key TV networks like CBS and CNN and streaming platforms HBO Max and Paramount+, as well as decades-old libraries with titles ranging from “Harry Potter” to “Top Gun.”

But among terms of Monday’s agreement announced by California Attorney General Rob Bonta — who led the states’ case — Skydance-owned Paramount pledged to increase film production in the U.S., commit millions of dollars to a fund to support workers displaced by the merger and create new monitoring of the editorial independence of the company’s news operations.

The settlement still needs a final sign-off by a judge.

Paramount CEO David Ellison welcomed the terms reached with both the states and the Writers Guild of America on Monday, which he said marks “complete clearance” for his company’s merger with Warner — reiterating that such a combo will “build a stronger Hollywood.”

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Hurricane Polo grows into a Category 4 storm in the Pacific off Mexico

MIAMI (AP) — Hurricane Polo grew into a Category 4 storm in the eastern Pacific late on Monday and was forecast to bring heavy rain to southwestern Mexico but remain offshore.

It had maximum sustained winds of 130 mph (215 kph) and may intensify further and reach Category 5 strength Tuesday or Wednesday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said. Category 4 storms have winds of 130-156 mph (210-250 kph) on the Saffir-Simpson scale, and Category 5 hurricanes have winds exceeding 157 mph (250 kph).

Polo was moving east-southeast at 5 mph (7 kph) and was forecast to sharply turn northwest and west-northwest. On that path, Polo would skirt the Mexican coast for a few days without directly making landfall.

A tropical storm watch was issued for part of the coast south of Manzanillo in Colima state to Tecpan de Galeana in Guerrero state, meaning tropical storm conditions were possible in the area within two days. Polo was centered about 330 miles (530 kilometers) south-southeast of Manzanillo as of late Monday.

Heavy rain with the potential for flooding and landslides was forecast for coastal Guerrero and Michoacán states through Thursday. Smaller amounts of rain were possible in coastal portions of Oaxaca, Colima and Jalisco states.