Category: Semafor

The News The first ad for Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton’s Senate campaign couldn’t be played in full on TV. “They Said It” began with one Chicagoan saying “F— Trump,” then another, then four more — including Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth. Stratton didn’t say the four-letter word herself, appearing instead ...

The Philippines declared a national emergency as fuel shortages caused by the war in Iran threatened its economic stability, one of a number of Asian nations scrambling to address a looming lack of energy. Several of Asia’s biggest economies import more than 50% of their energy from the Gulf. The ...

OpenAI is shutting down its Sora video generation app, incidentally ending a $1 billion deal with Disney in the process. Sora unnerved the entertainment industry when it was launched in 2024, with its rapid creation of photo-quality video from text prompts. But it is expensive: Forbes estimated that the company ...

West African farmers could be hardest hit from a global fertilizer supply squeeze sparked by the war in the Middle East, experts warned. The agriculture-reliant region imports the majority of its fertilizer, much of which came from the Gulf before Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. The timing of the ...

The View From Dr. Sarah Kapnick and Derek Chollet Energy prices are volatile as the Iran conflict has disrupted flows through the Strait of Hormuz. Shipping insurance premiums are surging and tanker routes are shifting. Major countries such as India are having to ration oil and gas, which, until recently, ...

The first Chinese-owned cargo vessel successfully passed through the Strait of Hormuz since Iran began letting a select number of ships navigate the waterway, Caixin reported. In the last three weeks, Tehran has let some non-Western ships pass through a “safe” corridor in the strait that bypasses traditional shipping lanes, ...

Volkswagen is pivoting from cars to military tech at one of its factories, a reflection of the challenges facing Germany’s auto sector. The company plans to use an embattled German car plant to manufacture components for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, the Financial Times reported. It’s the highest-profile example ...

A spike in jet fuel prices stemming from the Iran war is passing through to consumers, resulting in more expensive airfares for summer travel, analysts said. The CEO of United Airlines, the world’s largest by capacity, warned Tuesday that ticket prices may increase by 20%. Global airlines are making contingency ...

Meta appointed its chief technology officer to oversee efforts to drive AI adoption across its workforce, The Wall Street Journal reported, as the company looks to remove organizational layers and speed up work. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is also building a personalized AI agent to help him do his job. Use ...

NASA is abandoning efforts to build a space station orbiting the Moon, and will instead put $20 billion toward a lunar base, officials announced Tuesday. The ambitious plan calls for dozens of launches in the next decade, with crews eventually exploring the lunar south pole. “The goal is not flags ...