20/06/2026

BIZ & FINANCE SATURDAY | JUNE 20, 2026

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EU leaders clash over next seven-year budget

Court rules India govt’s temporary

instead of a scientific place. The machine itself is trying to recreate the reality based on the data points, it’s like bringing all the little bits and dots and trying to build the reality itself.” At the end of the experience, visitors can sample chocolates with flavours generated by the model, or print T-shirts and paintings resulting from their interaction. These are intended to serve as tangible souvenirs of the ephemeral dream in Dataland. “The system forgets you; that is the beauty of it,“ says Anadol. Dataland opens to the public on June 20. ban on Telegram legal NEW DELHI: Telegram yesterday lost its bid to overturn an Indian government order temporarily banning the messaging app, with a New Delhi court ruling that the government’s actions, aimed at preserving the integrity of a key med school exam, were legal and reasonable. The ban of the app from June 16 to June 22 has stirred an intense debate in the world’s most populous nation. Free speech rights activists say it has set a worrying precedent that cements government powers to curb the use of any messaging platform whenever it sees fit. The government put the block in place after the results of the country’s exam for students hoping to get into medical schools were scrapped last month amid allegations that the question paper had been leaked. The government is “empowered to issue directions for blocking the public access to Telegram,“ Delhi High Court Justice Tejas Karia said in his ruling. Telegram, which has more than 150 million users in India and counts the country as its biggest market, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the verdict. The Indian government also did not respond to a request for comment. “It sets a concerning precedent with consequences for the open internet that extend well beyond this case,“ digital rights group Internet Freedom Foundation said on X after the verdict. The block only affected Telegram, with the government arguing that the app represented a unique case, citing features such as the easy recreation of blocked channels and the way phone numbers and username-based interactions can be concealed, which create “a persistent enforcement challenge”. Telegram’s founder Pavel Durov has publicly criticised the ban, saying it punishes the platform’s users, while the exam leaks have moved elsewhere. The temporary ban, which took Telegram offline and removed it from app stores this week, was implemented within hours by Indian telecom companies as well as the likes of Google and Apple. It marks the most high-profile court tussle between a global tech giant and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government this year. Last year, the government reduced the number of officials who can order content takedowns following a bitter legal battle with Elon Musk’s X. The Telegram ban was preceded by days of private sparring between the two sides in which the Indian government rebuked Telegram for not proactively removing accounts offering purported leaked exam papers, Reuters reported on Thursday. Telegram in court accused the government of deliberately omitting details of the company’s proactive processes. Telegram has said it took down more than 900 links involving unlawful exam-related content.

Poland, Spain, Greece, Estonia, Finland and Slovakia next year, a deal should be struck by the end of 2026, so as not to become hostage to all the election campaigns. To help reduce national contributions of the net payers while keeping the spending ambitions of the net beneficiaries, EU leaders have to agree on new sources of revenue for the EU budget, ones that would not come directly from national coffers. Among the proposed options, rejected by some countries and supported by others, is a share of the cash that EU governments get from selling CO2 emissions permits to companies and a share of the tax on goods imported into the EU that were made in countries where climate policies are weaker than in the EU. Other revenue options include a tax on non collected e-waste, a share of the tobacco excise duty and an annual lump-sum contribution from large companies operating and selling in the EU. Further proposals include a levy on extreme wealth, on digital services, on online gambling and on crypto asset capital gains. While leaders were unlikely to make decisions yesterday on which new revenue streams they want to give to the EU, they will indicate their preferences to allow the incoming Irish EU presidency to prepare a new compromise proposal for October. – Reuters

o Richer and poorer member states remain at odds over spending priorities in the proposed €2 trillion fiscal plan

BRUSSELS: European Union (EU) leaders were set to clash over the bloc’s budget on Friday after an initial proposal on spending priorities and funding sources for 2028-2034 drew sharp criticism from both net contributors and beneficiary countries. The EU budget is how the EU finances all its policies – from supporting farmers to equalising standards of living across the 27-nation bloc, to new technology development and student exchange programmes. According to the European Commission’s proposal, the 2028 2034 budget should be €2 trillion (RM9.4 trillion). Richer EU countries pay more into the budget than they get out of it, while poorer ones receive more than they pay. Every seven years, the two groups fight bitterly to reach a unanimous deal needed for the budget to pass. The first compromise proposal prepared by the Cypriot EU presidency last week reduced the Commission proposal by 2%, which was not enough for some and far too much for others. It also allotted more money within the budget for farmers and for cohesion policies at the expense of support for research and

innovation and other areas, which angered countries trying to compete with the industries of China and the US. The Netherlands, a net contributor to the budget, was unhappy with the first compromise because it focused too much on agriculture and cohesion – seen as traditional spending – rather than the new challenges of defence and modernisation. “The proposal currently on the table is really not good enough for the Netherlands,” Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten said on Thursday. Spain, which is a small, but still net beneficiary, had a different view, arguing the budget was too small and spending on farmers and cohesion should be adjusted upwards for inflation. “The proposal ... is even more inadequate than the one initially proposed by the European Commission, and we therefore certainly do not agree with it at all,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said. Legally, EU governments need to agree on the 2028-2034 budget by the end of 2027. But because of elections in France, Italy,

The ‘Machine Dreams: Rainforest’ exhibition blends AI, immersive visuals and visitor data to create a constantly evolving rainforest experience. – AFPPIX AI museum brings sights, sounds and smells of the rainforest

LOS ANGELES: The squawks of macaws, the smell of wet earth after rain and a swirl of colors will transport visitors from a Los Angeles museum to the heart of the Amazon rainforest – or rather, an AI version of it. Data collected from those visitors – their movements, their heartbeats and even the temperature of their skin – will feed the computer that is creating the immersive display, using a network of sensors, including those on the wrists of ticket-holders. “Machine Dreams: Rainforest” is the inaugural exhibition at Dataland, a new museum in the heart of America’s second

grade, watch-like device to monitor their emotions and heart rate for interacting with the model. They will also carry a portable scent diffuser throughout the experience. Using billions of images and datapoints, the model will create a constantly evolving experience. It is as if the system were “dreaming,“ Erkilic explained. “It’s moving all the time, because it’s gathering data. As soon as it builds one structure, it also affects the overall storytelling,“ he said. “It’s coming from a more poetic place

biggest city that is the brainchild of Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkilic, whose 10 million lines of code power the animations – using 1.5 billion pixels. Anadol said he was inspired by a visit to the Brazilian Amazon, a place he thinks everyone should experience. “But I do not believe we should all go to the rainforest,“ he told AFP. “The question was: can the rainforest come to us? Can we still connect, feel special, respect and love nature, learn about it?” Wall-mounted sensors will track visitors’ movements, and guests will wear a medical