Category: Semafor

On Monday, millions of pilgrims begin arriving in Mina, a small valley five kilometers east of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, where they will spend several nights in what becomes, briefly, the largest temporary city on earth. The tents they sleep in bear little resemblance to what earlier generations encountered: ...

Benin’s new president promised to ensure citizens benefitted from the growing strength of the economy. Romauld Wadagni, 49, was sworn in on Sunday, having previously served as finance minister under his predecessor. That administration produced economic growth of 7.5% last year, the highest level since 1990. The economy under Wadagni ...

The World Health Organization raised the threat posed by Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo to “very high” as the virus spread in the African nation. The epidemic is believed to have killed at least 200 people, though experts have warned of a significant undercount of both deaths and ...

Two new launches pointed to the increased demand for EVs at the top end of the car market. Ferrari is expected to today unveil the almost $600,000 Luce, its first ever EV, marking a major departure for the Maranello-based brand, which has long been known for making some of the ...

The Scoop A joint venture between a US defense startup and a Saudi firm is building a factory near Riyadh to manufacture combat drones modeled on Iran’s Shahed system, which has been used to pummel Gulf countries over the past few months. The facility is being developed by SR2Vector, a ...

For decades, African leaders, from Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah to Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, made a simple argument to Europe and the industrialized world: No continent can sustainably develop while serving mainly as a supplier of raw materials and a consumer of finished goods. That argument was long dismissed as ideological nostalgia ...

The News Kenya’s proposed new taxes risk hampering the growth of fintechs and mobile money services, with Safaricom’s M-Pesa likely to be the worst hit, experts told Semafor. Kenya President William Ruto’s administration is seeking to impose a new 16% value-added tax on services by payment service providers including M-Pesa ...

Russia on Sunday attacked Ukraine in one of the largest aerial assaults of the war, signaling a new wave of escalation as it used a rarely launched hypersonic ballistic missile. The use of the Oreshnik missile, which Russia has used against Ukraine only twice before, came after the Kremlin accused ...

The gulf between US stocks and Americans’ spirits keeps widening. The Dow on Friday hit a record high — the same day consumer sentiment hit an all-time low. Beyond pressures from the Iran war, which stock markets have largely shrugged off, AI is a factor in the divergence. Traders are ...

The Trump administration’s changes to the green card application process — which require immigrants to apply for permanent residency from outside the US — drew diplomatic blowback. On a visit to New Delhi, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the policy, expected to be challenged in court, was “not ...