Category: Semafor

Officials, led by Ukraine’s president, warned that Russia appeared to be readying military escalation against Kyiv and Europe more broadly. Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the Financial Times that his country intercepted communications suggesting the Kremlin was loosening its rules of war to allow for greater targeting of civilian sites, adding that ...

Brazil’s election this weekend will reshape the diplomatic strategy of Latin America’s biggest economy, analysts said. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is in effect tied with his main challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro, though neither appears likely to win outright in Sunday’s first-round vote, necessitating a runoff. The EU, which spent ...

European leaders should describe covert Russian actions as “terror attacks” amounting to “war,” instead of calling them “hybrid,” Estonia’s foreign minister told Politico Thursday. His remarks came days after Tallinn blamed Moscow for an arson attack against an Estonian factory supplying unmanned vehicles to Ukraine, amid a surge in Russia-linked ...

Iran published a 14,390-word letter to Americans this week proclaiming the regime’s victory over the US, suggesting the two sides were no closer to resolving their seven-month war through diplomatic means. Iran claimed it “decimated America’s military bases across the Gulf, forced the US Navy into retreat and destroyed billions ...

Starbucks opened its first cafés in China’s Xinjiang region, prompting criticism from activists and US lawmakers over the coffee giant’s decision to expand into an area widely scrutinized for human rights violations. Beijing has denied allegations that it represses Xinjiang’s Muslim Uyghur population, and has invested heavily to rebrand the ...

The Trump administration is pressuring European capitals to release their emergency diesel supplies or else face a US diesel export ban, as the White House turns to coercion in efforts to tame surging fuel prices. France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Ireland have all been pressured to draw down supplies, Politico reported. ...

Broadcom plans to lend Anthropic up to $42 billion to lease its chips, Reuters reported, adding to the trend of chipmakers financing the AI buildout that’s driving demand for their products. Nvidia is also financing a slew of frontier labs, in the process becoming a kind of “central bank of ...

, by Sherry Turkle. MIT sociologist Turkle probes the causes and effects of an increasing emotional reliance on artificial intelligence, with what Kirkus Reviews described as a “frank psychological expertise” that “readers are lucky to hear.” Weaving together interviews with tech developers and profiles of the people who have grown ...

The UAE is pushing governments and private financial institutions to drastically scale up investment in global water infrastructure, a senior government official told Semafor. Although he declined to disclose a specific fundraising target, Abdulla Balalaa, the country’s assistant minister of foreign affairs for energy and sustainability, said that a primary ...

A top-10 UBS shareholder is urging the bank to leave Switzerland, days after Semafor broke the news that the company was mulling doing just that. Artisan Partners said it is worried that the bank won’t be able to compete with US rivals if it has to raise new capital, as ...