Convicted killer Alex Murdaugh has reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors on a string of financial fraud charges – admitting that he stole millions of dollars from law firm clients. In Monday’s agreement, he will plead guilty to 22 federal charges including wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering. He will appear in court on Thursday to enter his plea – marking the first time he has ever pleaded guilty to a crime. This comes as the new series of Netflix’s “Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal” was released on Wednesday, revealing Curtis Eddie Smith – Murdaugh’s alleged co-conspirator in the bizarre hitman plot – making a bombshell claim. When he asked Murdaugh why he wanted him to fatally shoot him, Mr Smith claims he told him: “Because they’re going to be able to prove that I’m responsible for Maggie and Paul.” The show also hears from Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca Hill – who is now at the centre of jury tampering accusations brought by Murdaugh’s attorneys in their bid for a new murder trial. A random Georgia man’s now-deleted Facebook rant about his wife’s aunt is at the centre of the bid. Read More Alex Murdaugh’s request for a new trial complicated by angry husband’s Facebook rant Alex Murdaugh pleads guilty to committing crime for first time

Broadcom said it plans to close its $69 billion deal for cloud computing firm VMWare on Wednesday. Broadcom

Artificial Intelligence is poised to forever change how we use computers, or at least Microsoft

Shota Imanaga isn't the biggest Japanese name in the free agent market, but he'd be incredibly impactful for these five MLB teams.

Banking giant UBS said Thursday it plans to fully absorb Credit Suisse's century-old Swiss division and slash thousands of jobs across Switzerland, as it seeks...

Used-car shoppers won’t have it easy this year or next

French journalist groups have condemned "sexist" remarks directed at women reporters by Eric Dupond-Moretti, the...

By Jody Godoy NEW YORK Terraform Labs and its founder Do Kwon must face fraud allegations brought by

President Joe Biden on Tuesday is hosting Israel’s figurehead president Isaac Herzog at the White House

The clock is ticking, the debts are racking up but the EU still remains far from a deal...

Asian markets were mixed Monday ahead of US debt talks between President Joe Biden and congressional leaders, with both sides still apart but also confident a deal can be...

Google is reportedly planning to “supercharge” its virtual personal assistant software with the inclusion of new generative artificial intelligence features similar to those in chatbots like Bard and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Work on the new version of Google Assistant has begun with the mobile version of the product, Axios first reported, citing an internal e-mail sent to employees. The tech giant is reportedly reorganising its team working on Assistant with an anticipated elimination of “a small number of roles”. However, it remains unclear how many employees in the team will likely be affected by layoffs. “We remain deeply committed to Assistant and we are optimistic about its bright future ahead,” Axios quoted Peeyush Ranjan, the vice president of Google Assistant, and Duke Dukellis, the company’s product director, as saying. Google spokesperson Jennifer Rodstrom told The Verge in a statement that the company is currently exploring ways to use large language models like ChatGPT to “supercharge Assistant and make it even better”. The move comes as Google announced a major update to its own ChatGPT rival Bard last month, which allows the AI chatbot to respond to queries by talking. Bard draws on vast quantities of training data to come up with human-like responses to a wide range of queries. Similar to ChatGPT, Bard has proven capable of producing a range of output, from summarising texts to generating computer code, for creating games or software programmes. The decision to “supercharge” Assistant also comes as the tech giant noted in a report last month that artificial intelligence marks the “most profound” technology shift in our lifetimes with the potential to “turbocharge” the UK economy. Google estimated in the report that the economic boost from AI would be equivalent to an annual growth of 2.6 per cent, creating £200bn in extra revenues for public services and “turning around the recent growth stagnation”. The tech giant’s estimation did not account for the impact of AI on some jobs, however, with many critics expressing fear of the impact that disruptive technology has. For instance, professor Geoffrey Hinton – widely regarded as the “godfather of AI” for his research contributions to the field – resigned from his job at Google, expressing fear that “bad actors” could use new AI technologies to harm others. “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things... I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have,” he said. Read More Tired of proving you’re not a robot? Say goodbye to Captcha boxes ChatGPT rival with ‘no ethical boundaries’ sold on dark web Google’s AI chatbot Bard can now talk Geothermal breakthrough uses oil drilling tech to tap renewable energy How to take the perfect picture of tonight's supermoon Twitter takes down giant ‘X’ sign on roof after a week following city investigation