Tuesday newspaper round-up: Meta, EDF, Tesla

Meta has claimed news is not the antidote to misinformation and disinformation spreading on Facebook and Instagram, as the company continues to push back against being forced to pay media companies for news in Australia. Meta announced in March it would not enter into new agreements with media companies to pay for news following the end of contracts signed in 2021 under the Morrison government’s news media bargaining code. – Guardian

At the World AI Conference in Shanghai last week, one of China’s leading artificial intelligence companies, SenseTime, unveiled its latest model, SenseNova 5.5. The model showed off its ability to identify and describe a stuffed toy puppy (wearing a SenseTime cap), offered feedback on a drawing of a rabbit, and instantly read and summarised a page of text. According to SenseTime, SenseNova 5.5 is comparable with GPT-4o, the flagship artificial intelligence model of the Microsoft-backed US company OpenAI. – Guardian

Sir Keir Starmer’s choice of a leading advocate of HS2 as rail minister has stoked industry hopes that scrapped parts of the project may be revived. While the primary task facing Lord Hendy, whose appointment was announced on Monday, will be to oversee Labour’s renationalisation of train operators, he’s also likely to prove a strong advocate for expanding the network. Lord Hendy, who previously worked closely with Boris Johnson and sat as a crossbench peer, last year criticised Rishi Sunak’s decision to halt HS2 at Birmingham, choosing to speak out despite his position as chairman of the state-owned track operator Network Rail. – Telegraph

French state energy giant EDF has pulled out of the competition to build mini-nuclear reactors in Britain, as it takes its blueprints back to the drawing board. The company had been vying with five others to win government support for its small modular reactor (SMR) design, with two winners set to be chosen by the end of the year. But with submissions for the latest stage of the competition due at 4pm on Monday, it is understood that EDF put forward no design and has effectively now withdrawn from the running. – Telegraph

A Tesla shareholder is calling for more than $7 billion in lawyers’ fees to be paid by the electric car maker, after he successfully challenged Elon Musk’s record-breaking pay package. Richard Tornetta, who owned nine shares in Tesla when he sued over Musk’s pay package in 2018, is pursuing the legal fee on behalf of three law firms that represented him in a battle he ultimately won in January when Musk’s $56 billion package was voided by a judge in Delaware. – The Times

The German state has begun auctioning off confiscated bitcoin worth €2.5 billion in a sale that may have contributed to a recent slump in the cryptocurrency’s value. Authorities impounded a digital wallet containing nearly 50,000 bitcoin from the owners of Movie2k, the now-defunct film piracy website, in January. It is thought to have been the largest seizure of its kind in Germany. – The Times