Had it ever left the ground, the self-piloting camera drone that Antoine Balaresque dreamt of building when he was an undergraduate at Berkeley would have been a marvel of the modern world. The loan from Silicon Valley Bank that sustained his doomed venture arouses a different kind of wonder. It is unlikely that many banks
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China is refusing to let US secretary of state Antony Blinken visit Beijing over concerns that the FBI will release the results of an investigation into the downed suspected Chinese spy balloon. Four people familiar with the negotiations said China had told the US it was not prepared to reschedule a trip that Blinken cancelled
The writer is executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies Asia, and author of ‘The Billionaire Raj’ Two recent Beijing trips by global leaders have shed light on the many paradoxes of a future age of economic decoupling. A visit by Emmanuel Macron, president of France, and Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission
The CBI needs to become “sharper and more focused” to reclaim the confidence of its members and the government after “devastating” allegations of rape, sexual harassment and bullying, the organisation’s president said on Friday. Speaking publicly for the first time after a week of bruising headlines questioning the future of the UK’s premier business lobby
For the victims of the rape, sexual harassment and bullying allegations that have rocked the UK’s biggest business lobby group, it has been a frustrating four days of silence. But, on Friday, the CBI’s president Brian McBride finally offered them a personal apology. “The first message is that Brian McBride, personally, and this organisation are
Do you want the good news or the bad news? Luckily, it is the same either way: one month on, it seems the short, sharp banking crises on both sides of the Atlantic have fizzled out without causing an outright disaster. (Yet). No sensible investor wants to see a repeat of the 2008 crisis, and
Jack Teixeira was reading a book on the deck of his home in a wooded section of North Dighton, Massachusetts, on Thursday, when federal agents swarmed in for what turned out to be an easy arrest. The 21-year-old airman, who was wearing red shorts and an olive T-shirt, has suddenly emerged as the latest outlaw
The writer is a former editor of the FT and a former director-general of the CBI Two questions are posed by the sacking this week of the CBI’s director-general and the allegations of shocking behaviour by a number of unnamed senior managers. The first is whether the organisation still serves a useful purpose, and would
The low point in a dire week for President Emmanuel Macron came during a press conference on Wednesday when a reporter confronted him with a jibe from an old adversary: Donald Trump. The former US president, who alternately embraced and clashed with his French counterpart, had taken issue with Macron’s state visit to Beijing earlier
Elon Musk is developing plans to launch a new artificial intelligence start-up to compete with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, as the billionaire seeks to join Silicon Valley’s race to build generative AI systems. The Tesla and Twitter chief is assembling a team of artificial intelligence researchers and engineers, according to people familiar with the tech entrepreneur’s plans.
Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is severely ill and his condition is worsening rapidly, according to a key member of his team who raised the possibility that the politician may be being poisoned. Navalny was suffering from stomach pains and had lost more than 8kg in body weight in just over two weeks, Ruslan
A 21-year-old Air Guardsman suspected of leaking highly classified US intelligence documents made his first appearance in court on Friday, where he was charged with illegally sharing top-secret national defence information. Jack Teixeira entered the courtroom in handcuffs wearing a tan prison uniform, according to local media. A hearing on his detention will take place
The G7 has privately rebuked Switzerland for not doing enough to combat Russian oligarchs evading sanctions. A letter sent to the Swiss government, signed by G7 ambassadors in Bern on behalf of the group, as well as the EU’s ambassador, said Swiss privacy laws and other “loopholes” were being exploited by Russians to hide billions
The writer is head of the foreign and defence policy team at the American Enterprise Institute It’s really bad. So bad the Pentagon is not only conducting its own investigation, it also immediately called in the Justice Department to investigate. Over 100 pages of highly classified CIA Operations Center and Joint Chiefs of Staff assessments — some
In 1964, Lyndon Johnson’s campaign for the White House released a TV ad, “Daisy”, which became legendary among political campaigners. A little girl is sweetly plucking petals, before a countdown begins and a mushroom cloud fills the screen. When LBJ won a landslide victory over Barry Goldwater, the advertising industry claimed that Daisy had proved
Citigroup said strong consumer spending and corporate activity drove profits in the first three months of this year, even as a lack of deals and increased credit costs weighed on its bottom line. The US bank said on Friday that net income in the first quarter rose to $4.6bn, or $2.19 per share. That was
Discussion boards for video-gaming enthusiasts and music fans seem an unlikely place for the sharing of official government secrets. But this week, a Pentagon probe into a trove of highly classified leaked materials was traced back to Discord, an emerging chat platform popular among gamers and cryptocurrency investors and known for its light-touch approach to
JPMorgan Chase expects to increase the profits it makes from lending and said that deposits had jumped by $37bn in the first quarter, following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Net income rose 52 per cent from a year ago to $12.6bn, or $4.10 per share in the first quarter, boosted by a rise in
The European parliament is preparing tough new measures over the use of artificial intelligence, including forcing chatbot makers to reveal if they use copyrighted material, as the EU edges towards enacting the world’s most restrictive regime on the development of AI. MEPs in Brussels are close to agreeing a set of proposals to form part
BlackRock’s assets under management increased to $9.1tn in the first quarter but net income fell 19 per cent year on year, as the world’s largest money manager struggled with squeezed margins, subdued markets and lower performance fees. Revenue was down 10 per cent year on year to $4.2bn, with performance fees on its hedge funds and
I have arrived in Barrington, Illinois, an hour early for my lunch with Hank Paulson. The cloudless prairie sky is as big as the town is small. Although just 40 miles north-west of Chicago, Barrington betrays no shadow of its soaring urban neighbour. The main street even has a kiosk where you can deposit your