Category: Semafor

Spain’s king said his country’s control of exclaves in Africa was “non-negotiable,” after the cities became flashpoints in territorial disputes with Morocco and Europe’s anti-immigration debate. Ceuta rose to international prominence in July, when more than 70,000 people swept into the tiny exclave in a matter of hours. Most have ...

A little-noticed deal this week for senior-care clinics is the first shot fired in a Wall Street turf battle. BlackRock’s HPS credit arm is essentially lending $2.8 billion to Humana, marking Larry Fink’s entry into a space that Apollo has had to itself until now. Apollo’s dryly named “capital solutions” ...

AI agents, meet double agents. OpenAI said it identified, fired, and reported to the FBI an employee who bugged its office. The employee, a Saudi national later identified by law enforcement as Abdulrahman Alfozan, was arrested last week and charged with illegally recording company communication. (He appears to have some ...

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he plans to unveil $2 billion in new European investments next week, as the continent’s economic prospects get a boost from AI. “Europe needs to get in the race,” Huang said. The IMF’s chief economist noted that AI-related exports and investments have given “some countries ...

Iran and Russia are escalating their hybrid warfare campaigns against the UK, the head of MI5 warned Tuesday. The British intelligence agency is now devoting more resources to state threats than during the Cold War, Ken McCallum said in his annual speech, calling Moscow “aggressor No. 1” and blaming Tehran ...

Bumble agreed to a $1.3 billion acquisition Tuesday that would take the dating app private, after years of falling revenue amid a shift in online dating habits. Bumble distinguished itself by only allowing women to message first, eventually going public in 2021 at a $14 billion valuation, before scrapping its ...

The IMF warned that “zombie companies” — whose earnings haven’t covered interest payments for at least three years — now comprise more than a fifth of Asia’s outstanding corporate debt, potentially posing a systemic risk. Zombie firms’ debt share has more than doubled since 2008. “This rising share of corporate ...

AI may soon be able to self-replicate across internet-connected personal devices in homes, Anthropic warned, raising the possibility of so-called “botnets” that would be difficult to stamp out. While botnets predate AI and range from harmless to malicious, impending AI swarms could hijack the entire internet, the startup has said. ...

Tim’s view The contradictory tangle of energy policy actions taken by US President Donald Trump toward Russia over the weekend risks repeating mistakes that he and his allies often slammed his predecessor for. On Friday, Trump announced the US would waive sanctions on Russian diesel exports until the spring and ...

Oil prices ticked down on Tuesday as Saudi oil executives sought to reassure the market following a major attack on the capital’s airport. International energy bosses were largely absent from this week’s World Petroleum Council Energy Congress, held in Riyadh for the first time, after the Houthi attack. The CEOs ...