Texas and its public schools could face future budget pressures in the wake of last month’s passage of a constitutional amendment to decrease school property taxes, Fitch Ratings said Thursday. Proposition 4 was among 12 other constitutional amendments Texas voters approved Nov. 7 with many of the measures tapping surplus state money for tax relief
Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. French artificial intelligence start-up Mistral has been valued at €2bn in a blockbuster funding round set to close as early as Friday, becoming the latest beneficiary of the investor frenzy to buy into the world’s
The Biden administration has awarded $8.2 billion to major train projects across the country that it said would help advance the nation’s first high-speed national network and a series of intracity routes. “The bottom line is that, under President Biden, we’re delivering world class passenger rail service that Americans ought to be able to expect,”
“I’ve seen the lights go out on Broadway; I saw the Empire State laid low; And life went on beyond the Palisades; They all bought Cadillacs; And left there long ago.” While Billy Joel wrote those lyrics for Miami 2017 way back in 1975 as New York City sat on a mountain of debt and
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. US employers added 199,000 jobs in November, a jump from October and another sign of labour market strength that will bolster Federal Reserve officials’ view that the economy can withstand high interest rates. The non-farm
Bitcoin and the broader crypto market have been gleefully declared dead more than a few times during bear markets, but some experts say it would take a genuinely extreme set of events for it to truly die. According to 99Bitcoins — a website that, among other things, tracks how many times Bitcoin (BTC) has been
As the first blockchain and cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC) paved the way for everything that’s come since: nonfungible tokens (NFTs), smart contracts, tokenization, layer-2 solutions, and all the rest. Due to Bitcoin’s value to the cryptosphere, forming the bedrock that supports the rest of the market, its protocol is rarely altered. With hundreds of billions of
The U.S. Treasury Department would be authorized to float up to $1 billion of bonds exempt from state and local taxes to fund climate resiliency projects under a measure introduced Wednesday by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. The bill would allow Treasury to issue “climate bonds” for purchase by “any American” to finance projects undertaken by
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Sometimes this job takes you down unexpected avenues. And so it was that I spent much of Thursday night squinting at a blurry picture of a man in an expensive coat who might be Timothée
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Spoiler alert: Boris Johnson didn’t take Covid-19 seriously enough. The UK’s pandemic inquiry is beginning to feel like a slow-moving whodunnit where everyone already knows the ending. What Johnson took very seriously indeed, as the
Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Chinese economy myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. President Xi Jinping has warned that China’s economic recovery is “still at a critical stage” as Communist party leaders pledged to support growth with further “proactive” fiscal and “effective” monetary policy in the new year.
Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the UK inflation myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. The British public’s expectations for price growth in the year ahead fell to the lowest level in two years last month, supporting the view that the Bank of England will not need to raise interest
Sean Turnell is seated with his back to Sydney’s harbour at a small table on the strip of restaurants along the Barangaroo promenade. It’s a hot and humid day and I’m running a couple of minutes late. When I see he’s wearing shorts and a polo shirt, I quietly curse myself for changing into my
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. UK developers have reached a “tipping point” on building costs due to slowing construction and easing energy prices, according to one of London’s biggest housebuilders. Rob Perrins, chief executive of Berkeley Group, said: “We are
India’s homegrown e-commerce giant Flipkart will use Polygon’s chain development kit (CDK) to launch a Web3 loyalty program. On Dec. 2, Polygon and Flipkart announced a strategic partnership to effectively position the e-commerce platform into Web3 and the metaverse. This included initiatives such as Flipverse for nonfungible tokens (NFTs), eDAO for metaverse and the FireDrops
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The UK’s competition regulator has taken the first steps of an investigation into Microsoft’s multibillion-dollar partnership with OpenAI, one of the tech industry’s most lucrative tie-ups. The Competition and Markets Authority on Friday said it
Developers of Bitcoin side-chain MicroVisionChain (MVC) have unveiled a BRC-20 decentralized exchange (DEX) as part of its roadmap for Q1 2024. In an interview with Cointelegraph, MVC chief operating officer Jason Kwok claims to have developed a “1:1 mapping relationship” with Bitcoin on its sidechain. “This essentially creates a parallel version of your Bitcoin assets,
Bitcoin (BTC) struggled to hold above $43,000 into Dec. 8 as an altcoin surge put Ether (ETH) in the spotlight. BTC/USD 1-hour chart. Source: TradingView ETH, SOL step up as Bitcoin takes liquidity Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed ongoing BTC price consolidation as ETH/USD added up to 7.6% in around 24 hours.
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The UK government has paid Rwanda another £100mn as part of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s troubled plan to send asylum seekers to the east African nation, taking the total cost so far to £240mn. The
Soon after Thirdweb revealed a security vulnerability that could impact a variety of common smart contracts used across the Web3 ecosystem, OpenZeppelin identified two specific standards as the root cause of the threat. On Dec. 4, Thirdweb reported a vulnerability in a commonly used open-source library, which could impact pre-built contracts, including DropERC20, ERC-721, ERC-1155
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Saudi Arabia shelved plans for Mohammed bin Salman to visit London in the past few days, according to UK officials, shortly before the crown prince hosted Vladimir Putin in Riyadh. UK and Saudi officials have