Category: Semafor

Global AI stocks fell Monday after top AI leaders endorsed slowing down the development of frontier models. Microsoft joined OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceXAI on Monday in endorsing a more prudent approach, raising investor fears that less compute spend could dampen the investment boom driving a global rally. While OpenAI has ...

As American tech leaders and policymakers debate the existential risks of AI and the necessity of regulating frontier development, other countries are focusing their efforts on catching up to the US. China views the AI race as a primary strategic battleground with the US, The Wall Street Journal reported, with ...

The 10-year US Treasury yield topped 5% Monday for the first time since 2023 as the widening Middle East conflict pushed oil prices up, cementing policymakers’ shift to a more hawkish posture. The possibility of a rate hike at the Federal Reserve’s upcoming meeting this week edged above 90% on ...

On an otherwise quiet Wednesday evening at Riyadh Boulevard, a sort of Times Square-meets-seaside-funfair, a bizarre experiment in the future of Gen Alpha entertainment was underway. Two blue and yellow humanoid robots attempted to beat each other up with punches twice as hard as Mike Tyson’s. Sponsored by Hero Esports, ...

Dubai’s exhibition industry is heading into its busiest stretch ever, with more than 100 shows packed into the final four months of the year after the war pushed the spring calendar into autumn. The twice-rescheduled Arabian Travel Market finally opens this week, while GITEX will bring 200,000 tech visitors in ...

South Africa’s oil importation bill could have been $4.7 billion lower if it had not closed a number of refineries, the country’s central bank said. Refining capacity in Africa’s largest economy has halved over the past decade and imported refined fuel now supplies more than half of domestic demand, the ...

The Gambia banned protests without permits following days of unrest over persistent electricity blackouts. The crackdown — which included police firing tear gas at demonstrators — comes ahead of December’s general election in which President Adama Barrow will seek a controversial third term. The country’s electricity problems have surged in ...

, directed by Antonin Baudry. The two-part historical saga follows Charles de Gaulle’s role in the French resistance during World War II. The film picks up in 1940 after France’s defeat by the Nazis and chronicles de Gaulle’s efforts to show the Allies that France was still worth fighting for. ...

Sweden’s center-left opposition appeared poised to retake power after a neck-and-neck election that nonetheless underlined the strength of the country’s far-right parties. Rising anti-immigrant sentiment has upended politics in Sweden, once one of the most welcoming countries to asylum seekers, as it has across Europe’s biggest economies: Marine Le Pen, ...

Beijing warned that AI advancements threatened China’s political, economic, and social stability even as it dismissed US calls to slow the technology’s development. China’s minister of state security wrote in a weekend essay that AI posed six principal risks from his perspective, including threatening the security of the country’s political ...