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Trump makes new play for tariffs

The Trump administration is floating tariffs of up to 12.5% on some 60 countries and the EU.

Trade Representative Jamieson Greer

College sports bill’s momentum masks its hurdles

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have concerns.

Former University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban

Platner asks for the Biden treatment from skeptical Democrats

Both Jill Biden and Graham Platner have highly scrutinized marriages (and families) that have made them political celebrities, and both argue that the public interest in their past missteps is a waste of time.

Graham Platner, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine, speaks during a “Fighting Oligarchy” campaign rally with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in Portland, Maine.

Sanders follows Trump toward government stakes in private firms

The Vermont independent is proposing a bill that would give the federal government a stake in leading AI companies.

Vulnerable members spend big on official comms

Franking, or the official communications sent out by Capitol Hill offices, is becoming a flashpoint in contested House elections.

Pressure builds for crypto ethics compromise

“There are a lot of people on Capitol Hill who recognize that it’s a gating function.”

Pulte’s new job complicates FISA renewal

Democrats were already worried about how the Trump administration wields the powerful surveillance tools.

Trump shipbuilding plan mimics fired Navy secretary’s work

John Phelan was ostensibly ousted from his job due to insufficient progress on the issue, but his replacement submitted a nearly identical proposal.

Blanche announces end of Trump’s $1.8 billion ‘anti-weaponization’ fund

The news could now unlock relatively quick action on Senate Republicans’ party-line immigration enforcement bill.

Roger Stone helped Trump choose an unorthodox new intel adviser

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte has no experience in the field but influential allies in his corner.

Trump berates Netanyahu over Lebanon incursion

Trump reportedly called Netanyahu “f*cking crazy,” and told him that “everyone hates Israel” because of its aggression.

Cuba suffering wartime-scale economic crisis

The economy was already struggling before the loss of cheap Venezuelan oil and Washington’s energy embargo.

A man walks on a street in the rain as Cuba reconnected its electrical grid across much of the island.

YouTubers make the jump to movies

Insiders expect more funding to flow toward internet-native filmmakers.

US job openings pick back up

The growth further dents the case for an interest rate cut.

US stocks increasingly rest on AI pillar

Companies have yet to show real returns on their AI investments.

Anthropic resists sharing financial info with lenders, sources say

Some of the lenders being pitched to buy a slice of the $4.6 billion notes that don’t have a backstop from Broadcom say they haven’t received a detailed look at the AI company’s numbers.

AI is evolving past hardware

Eventually, every hardware product will be something that AI-created software controls.

Microsoft official Steven Bathiche previews ‘Project Solara’ hardware for running AI agents on stage at Microsoft’s Build developer conference in San Francisco, California, U.S., June 2, 2026.

AI token costs are exceeding some employees’ salaries

Some JPMorgan employees are “spending more on tokens than their salary,” Zachery Anderson, chief data and analytics officer at JPMorgan’s Payments division, told Semafor.

People exit the JPMorgan Chase & Co., headquarters in New York City, U.S.

Tech companies bet on PC comeback

A few big companies are betting that data privacy concerns in the AI era will only grow, creating an opening for computing products that rely less on the cloud.

Why companies are penny-pinching on tokens

Last year, it looked like a lot of tasks could be handled by smaller AI models fine-tuned for specific tasks, but that’s not the way things have gone.

Microsoft launches AI assistant powered by OpenClaw

The tool could give businesses a taste of what agentic AI looks like at scale.

Sam Altman goes to the Hill as OpenAI preps policy framework

Altman plans to meet with Sen. Bernie Sanders, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and others.

Cuba suffering wartime-scale economic crisis

The economy was already struggling before the loss of cheap Venezuelan oil and Washington’s energy embargo.

A man walks on a street in the rain as Cuba reconnected its electrical grid across much of the island.

Why isn’t oil more expensive?

Oil prices are now hovering around $95 per barrel, 30% above pre-war levels.

A drone view of drilling rigs in Midland, Texas.

Trump administration rolls back climate disclosure rules

The move could leave big companies with a more onerous task ahead in reporting their carbon footprints to shareholders.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) headquarters in Washington, DC

Oman pours money into food security with $4.2B agriculture development

Food security is a perennial issue for Gulf countries, where the harsh climate and limited water resources make growing crops difficult and expensive.

An Omani man picks strawberries in Barka, Oman, January 18, 2026.

Bahrain bets on French luxury deals

Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund is partnering with France’s TRAIL to back an investment fund focused on arts, music, luxury, and sports deals.

Abu Dhabi doubles down on French AI with fresh deals

A joint venture of MGX, state-owned investment bank Bpifrance, chipmaker Nvidia, and France’s AI champion Mistral announced a Campus AI expansion and total investment close to $9 billion.

Kuwait shuts airport after Iranian hit

Iranian drones and missiles killed one person and injured more than 60 others, and caused “significant damage” to the facilities at Terminal 1.

Saudi Arabia continues expansion of Mecca with new development contracts

The contracts are part of the kingdom’s push to triple the number of pilgrims visiting during Hajj and Umrah to more than 30 million annually by 2030.

Japan capitalizes on China backlash, courts Pacific island nations

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said her government would help smaller states strengthen their “autonomy and resilience,” part of an anti-China push by Japan.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi attends a press conference.

Gig economy spurs revival in Chinese worker’s literature

A raft of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction is emerging about, and by, working-class laborers.

A gig worker sleeps on his bike

Beijing targets cooling consumer spending

Beijing is pushing new efforts to battle the lagging consumption weighing on China’s economy.

A person checks her smartphone in the New World City shopping mall, ahead of the opening of the National People’s Congress (NPC), in Shanghai, China

Africa’s leverage with China is growing

Beijing’s dependence on critical minerals is creating bargaining power for African governments — but debt pressures threaten to squander it.

Miners in South Africa.

Rwanda wins Basketball Africa League Championship

Basketball, which for years has languished in football’s shadow, has gained a foothold on the continent since the NBA-backed BAL was founded in 2019.

2026 Basketball Africa League (BAL) Champion RSSB Tigers (Rwanda)

Nigeria’s pension pot balloons 31%

The jump came after assets invested in domestic equities more than doubled in value, adding nearly $3 billion to the pool.

South Africa picks Ramaphosa critic for inquiry chair

The inquiry will assess whether President Ramaphosa should face impeachment, following a scandal over money at his game farm.

Barrick Mining weighs London share listing for Africa assets

The move comes as the gold mining giant seeks to move its operations from what it sees as risky regions.

US slashes visa processing hubs across Africa

The cutbacks will require citizens of countries without a hub to travel to an approved site to apply.

Norway, citing ‘crazy world’, reconsiders EU membership

Norway is reconsidering joining the EU, the country’s foreign minister told the Financial Times.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Støre and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February.

Sheinbaum decries US ‘interference’ in Mexico’s politics

Mexico’s president delivered her harshest rebuke yet of US “interference,” following Washington’s indictment of 10 Mexican officials for alleged cartel ties.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum

Israel seizes Crusader castle in Lebanon

Israeli forces seized a 12th-century Crusader castle in southern Lebanon, as Israel intensifies its farthest incursion into the country in 26 years, despite a nominal ceasefire.

Beaufort Castle in Lebanon

New York Public Radio’s new boss reorganizes the network

In her first four months on the job, Christy Tanner has swiftly eliminated many of NYPR’s seniormost figures.

Christy Tanner

Bret Baier on golfing with Trump, his 2028 predictions, and making the case for civility

Fox News’ Special Report host Bret Baier joins Mixed Signals to talk about what it’s like to sit at the center of American political media.

The ‘completely new’ ‘60 Minutes’

Nick Bilton’s hire signals that Paramount CEO David Ellison and editor-in-chief Bari Weiss’ overhaul of CBS News will be radical and total.

Paramount appears to sway DOJ staff on Warner Bros. takeover

US antitrust regulators appear to approve Paramount’s $110 billion studio deal after a two-hour meeting at the Justice Department Tuesday, people familiar with the matter said.

Thousands of journalists’ data exposed to dark web

More than half of the exposures contained personal information such as names, phone numbers, dates of birth, and addresses, per a new study from Proton.

How Cisco’s Chuck Robbins gets his team to ‘disagree and commit’

The longstanding CEO says a bad decision that you reverse is better than a delay.

Chuck Robbins

Why an anxious AI romantic now drives Match Group’s dating apps

CEO Spencer Rascoff uses digital “personas” to help the Tinder owner understand its users.

Spencer Rascoff

How syringe-maker BD is infusing AI into its medical devices

CEO Tom Polen is turning his 65,000 employees into lean manufacturing “problem-finders.”

Tom Polen, CEO and Chairman, Becton Dickinson

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