Category: Semafor

The difficulties facing two of Europe’s leading far right figures underscored right-wing movements’ failure to coalesce behind their sizable polling advantages. Convicted National Rally leader Marine Le Pen announced she will run for the French presidency next year after a court cleared the way, but will likely do so under ...

Lionel Messi lifted Argentina to a stunning comeback victory against Egypt Tuesday, but a series of charged controversies at the FIFA men’s World Cup threaten to overshadow the on-field heroics. French star Kylian Mbappé called a Paraguayan senator who targeted him with a racist rant a “despicable woman,” as French ...

Amazon is heading back to the bond market as spending on the AI buildout piles up. The company plans to borrow $25 billion or more, adding to a flood of AI-related borrowing. Big Tech companies have hit the limits of their cash flows — no small feat, as these are ...

As AI bots take over the internet and displace human eyeballs, one of the biggest web-infrastructure companies has an idea about how to charge them. Cloudflare recently rolled out what is essentially a bot paywall that would allow its customers to charge AI models for scraping its customers’ content. Online ...

Honeywell is betting its breakup will generate huge value like GE’s did, but that’s not a guarantee. The empire’s first move since splitting into three pieces came this week when Honeywell’s former chemicals and polymers arm, now called Solstice Advanced Materials, announced a $14.5 billion takeover of chip-materials maker Element ...

Investors pursuing AI riches keep chasing the chokepoint. First they backed the models themselves (OpenAI), then the chips and compute (Nvidia, CoreWeave) that power them, then the dirt and steel that house them (data center stocks). The “picks and shovels” approach to investing then turned sleepy utilities into AI plays, ...

The News As progressives fought on Tuesday to salvage some validation from the wreckage of Graham Platner’s Senate bid, his most important endorser on the left broke a conspicuous silence to try to nudge him out of the race. Sen. Bernie Sanders backed Platner nearly a year ago and elevated ...

Andy’s view China has long been a nation of techno-optimists, and not just because software and engineering — from smartphones to high-speed trains to drone deliveries — have radically improved life across the country in the span of a single generation. Faith in technology as a force for progress is ...

The UN warned of a “catastrophe” unfolding in el-Obeid, Sudan. The Human Rights Council passed a motion condemning escalating violence and setting up an inquiry; its chief said the besieged town has been subject to “relentless” drone strikes as well as executions, torture, abductions, and sexual violence. Save the Children ...

US officials said Iran had struck two tankers traversing the Strait of Hormuz, testing a ceasefire that has helped almost halve oil prices from their recent April peak. While some Gulf countries have ramped up oil shipments to near pre-Iran war levels — Saudi Arabia has exported 34 million barrels ...