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Category: Economics/Business

Money laundering: Trump crypto took $100 million from a shady businessman under investigation

Money laundering: Trump crypto took $100 million from a shady businessman under investigation

The New York Times reports: During the World Cup soccer final in New Jersey last month, Zach Witkoff, co-founder of President Trump’s cryptocurrency company, took in the action from a luxury suite. Joining him was a man who had made the president, and all the company’s co-founders, much richer. Two years earlier, the man, Guren “Bobby” Zhou, was a failed hardwood flooring retailer in Britain who had come under investigation there for money laundering and presided over the collapse of…

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Iran plots to deal Trump a blow in midterms by keeping him entangled in war

Iran plots to deal Trump a blow in midterms by keeping him entangled in war

Patrick Wintour writes: Tehran has set out a protracted negotiating timetable designed to keep Donald Trump embroiled in the Iran conflict until the midterm elections, in the hope of inflicting the same ruinous blow on his presidency as Jimmy Carter suffered over the 1979-81 US embassy hostage crisis. For many inside Iran, inflicting meaningful revenge on Trump is a legitimate and self-standing war aim, reflected in the mood of those attending the funeral of the supreme leader Ali Khamenei where…

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Capital One says it closed Trump Organization’s accounts after anti-money laundering probe

Capital One says it closed Trump Organization’s accounts after anti-money laundering probe

Reuters reports: Capital One Financial, hit back on Friday against a lawsuit over its decision to close ‌the Trump Organization’s bank accounts years ago, stating that it did so after a review by anti-money laundering experts. The disclosure marks the first time a bank has formally tied money laundering concerns to U.S. President Donald Trump’s family business. Capital One is seeking to dismiss ​the case by casting doubt on claims of illegally debanking — or denying services on religious or…

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Data center companies discover that secrecy doesn’t set the stage for public support

Data center companies discover that secrecy doesn’t set the stage for public support

Politico reports: The companies that build and run data centers are on the losing end of a populist backlash — and they’re struggling to respond. Fears that the server-packed data hubs will drive up electricity prices, deplete water supplies and gobble farmland have prompted people across the country to pack meetings of zoning boards and county commissions to oppose the projects, while fueling calls from leaders in both parties for state or national moratoriums. That opposition has become a rising…

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How Larry Ellison went from being the richest person in the world to the most vulnerable player in AI

How Larry Ellison went from being the richest person in the world to the most vulnerable player in AI

The New York Times reports: [Larry Ellison’s] big bet on A.I. was built on an astronomical amount of debt in every imaginable form — bonds, letters of credit, asset-backed securities — available in seemingly unlimited quantities, because the more you spent building A.I. infrastructure, the more you would earn, or so the logic went. Computer theorists called it the scaling hypothesis. It held that advancements in A.I. were directly tied to the generation of unprecedented amounts of computing power to…

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How Leopold Aschenbrenner built a $45 billion AI hedge fund — and lost most of it in days

How Leopold Aschenbrenner built a $45 billion AI hedge fund — and lost most of it in days

CNBC reports: Two years ago, Leopold Aschenbrenner argued he was one of few people in the world who saw the future clearly. In a sprawling, 165-page essay that became required reading in Silicon Valley, the former OpenAI researcher positioned himself as a kind of prophet for the coming age of artificial super intelligence. But this week, the limits of Aschenbrenner’s vision were on display when the AI-themed hedge fund he runs — named Situational Awareness, also the title of his…

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Situational Awareness hedge fund fell into a ditch

Situational Awareness hedge fund fell into a ditch

The New York Times reports: One of the hottest hedge funds in artificial intelligence received a bailout to stay afloat on Thursday amid a sudden drop in value for its investments. The fast-moving crisis unfolded over just 36 hours at Situational Awareness, a once-envied investment firm in San Francisco led by 20-somethings, including a former employee of OpenAI. The firm put out an emergency call for help to rivals, seeking to sell more than $10 billion of its stock to…

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Ultra-rich buying $49 million London mansions. ‘Trump unease’ generates 10% rise in Americans investing in Britain

Ultra-rich buying $49 million London mansions. ‘Trump unease’ generates 10% rise in Americans investing in Britain

Fortune reports: Wealthy Americans are swapping U.S. ZIP codes for foreign postcodes, chasing stability as the U.S. grapples with a soaring cost-of-living, political polarization, and economic uncertainty. And now, they’re snapping up prime real estate in one of the world’s most expensive housing markets: London. The British capital has witnessed a staggering jump in the number of sales valued above £15 million ($20 million)—and it’s largely being driven by Americans with deep pockets, according to luxury real estate company Beauchamp…

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Millions of farmers around the globe are contending with scarcity and higher prices for fuel

Millions of farmers around the globe are contending with scarcity and higher prices for fuel

The New York Times reports: For three days, he waited at the gas station in a crush of hundreds of villagers, as the temperature rose to 104 degrees. People tried to cut the line, and fights broke out, drawing police officers wielding batons. This, Dulal Hossain endured for the chance to buy diesel fuel. He was tormented by worries about his rice plants, the source of most of his livelihood. The diesel he eventually carried home by bicycle, in a…

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How the Iran war is highlighting data center vulnerabilities

How the Iran war is highlighting data center vulnerabilities

  DW News: A new chapter of warfare is opening. The US-Israel war against Iran has included strikes from both sides against an increasingly important target: commercial data centers. Facilities in the UAE, Bahrain and Iran were hit across the Persian Gulf As military operations increasingly rely on AI, how long will it take adversaries to target them? What kind of attack, including in the US, is likely? They’re already central to many people’s everyday digital lives and their online…

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An era of ‘abundance’ will never be delivered by billionaires. Their true belief is in scarcity

An era of ‘abundance’ will never be delivered by billionaires. Their true belief is in scarcity

Gizmodo reports: Elon Musk sat down with the editor-in-chief of the Economist for a taped interview that went live Thursday. The Tesla CEO has been avoiding normal journalists recently, even cancelling a planned interview with CNBC earlier this month. And it now seems pretty obvious why. Musk has a hard time answering normal questions about his often fascist and sometimes incoherent worldview. The interview started cordially enough, with Economist editor Zanny Minton Beddoes asking Musk about his thoughts on the…

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Why Trump is facing his biggest danger from rising oil prices since the war began

Why Trump is facing his biggest danger from rising oil prices since the war began

Politico reports: The expanding conflict in the Middle East is thwarting the Trump administration’s bid to lower gasoline prices ahead of the looming midterm elections. It’s not just the Strait of Hormuz — oil tankers are now facing attacks on three major shipping routes as of this week. Global crude oil inventories are reaching critically low levels, with little hope of refilling them soon. And the temporary measures that have kept markets afloat since the war in Iran began, such…

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EU fines Google $1 billion for stifling competition

EU fines Google $1 billion for stifling competition

Wired reports: The European Commission has levied a $1 billion penalty against Google over alleged competition law violations. An EC investigation found that Google had abused its dominance in the European Union’s search and app store markets to funnel people toward its own apps and services, in violation of the EU’s Digital Markets Act. The body has ordered Google to refrain from giving preferential treatment to its own services—such as shopping, accommodations, transport, and flights—in search rankings. Google must also…

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Data center forecasts keep climbing and so does public opposition. Something has to give

Data center forecasts keep climbing and so does public opposition. Something has to give

Dan Gearino writes: Forecasts of U.S. data center growth defy belief—and common sense. “The math isn’t mathing,” as many observers have said. Growth forecasts continue to climb, but there is little evidence that AI data center developers have profitable, sustainable business models. And nearly every major project is facing local opposition over concerns about land, power and water use. On Tuesday, BloombergNEF revised its estimate for data center electricity demand to 194 gigawatts by 2035, an 83 percent increase from…

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In the wake of the oil supply shock came a demand shock

In the wake of the oil supply shock came a demand shock

David Goldman writes: A decline in Chinese demand for the world’s oil has weighed significantly on global oil prices. That’s a big reason why crude never approached its 2022 prices or the record set in 2008, despite an oil shock several orders of magnitude larger than either of those preceding crises. China relies almost entirely on imports for oil. But its crude imports have fallen dramatically during the course of the war, tumbling below 8 million barrels per day from…

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