A Chinese son invited a violinist to play for his dying mother as she lay in her hospital bed, moving many people online with a melody dubbed “the most tender farewell”. Huang Haile, from southern China’s Guangdong province, bid farewell to his mother Ye Jindi on January 6, at the Dongguan Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine. A video of the violinist performing Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi’...
A Chinese son invited a violinist to play for his dying mother as she lay in her hospital bed, moving many people online with a melody dubbed “the most tender farewell”. Huang Haile, from southern China’s Guangdong province, bid farewell to his mother Ye Jindi on January 6, at the Dongguan Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine. A video of the violinist performing Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi’s famous song, Mother, featured in the 1999 film Kikujiro, in Ye’s intensive care unit (ICU) ward,...
The AI industry's greatest bottleneck, power, drove a boom in infrastructure throughout 2025. At Davos, leaders signal that 2026 is likely to see more of the same.
The AI industry's greatest bottleneck, power, drove a boom in infrastructure throughout 2025. At Davos, leaders signal that 2026 is likely to see more of the same.
Washington’s matrix of banking regulations, in the view of Wall Street lending giants, has long been overly complex and burdensome. Since the start of President Donald Trump ’s second term, regulators have worked to loosen the guardrails for large US banks such as Bank of America Corp. , JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Those moves include relaxing how much capital banks must hold...
Washington’s matrix of banking regulations, in the view of Wall Street lending giants, has long been overly complex and burdensome. Since the start of President Donald Trump ’s second term, regulators have worked to loosen the guardrails for large US banks such as Bank of America Corp. , JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Those moves include relaxing how much capital banks must hold as a buffer against potential losses, narrowing the scope of bank supervision, shrinking a Federal Reserve unit dedicated to bank oversight, and roping cryptoassets into the fold of the traditional banking system. Trump administration officials argue that these steps are necessary to boost economic growth, increase competitiveness and support innovation. But the embrace by top banking agencies of the White House’s deregulatory drive has left some Democratic lawmakers and consumer advocates concerned that what might seem good for the bottom line of banks isn’t a win for the economy. Those critics worry the changes now underway could effectively restore the more lax regulatory regime in place before the 2008 financial crisis. How is the Trump administration reshaping bank oversight? Shortly after Trump took office, he installed agency heads and officials who vowed to curtail regulations on banking. One of the key faces of that movement is the Fed’s top bank watchdog, Michelle Bowman , who has been lauded by banks for her drive to scale back regulation. Bowman shrunk the Fed’s supervision and regulation division by roughly 30% and mandated that staff prioritize tracking “material” risks that could significantly affect a bank’s solvency, such as inadequate capital or major operational vulnerabilities, rather than documentation lapses or other administrative matters that in her view do not have important implications for a bank’s safety and soundness. She also pushed to make it easier for banks to get a “ well managed ” rating, which clears the way for fresh acquisitions and le...
The president has backed off his threat to take Greenland by force. But his highly inflammatory remarks in Switzerland rattled U.S. allies and threatened to tear down the pillars of the world order. (Image credit: Evan Vucci)
The president has backed off his threat to take Greenland by force. But his highly inflammatory remarks in Switzerland rattled U.S. allies and threatened to tear down the pillars of the world order. (Image credit: Evan Vucci)
Jack Smith's appearance before the House Judiciary Committee marks the first open testimony about his work after presiding over two federal criminal indictments of President Trump. (Image credit: Chip Somodevilla)
Jack Smith's appearance before the House Judiciary Committee marks the first open testimony about his work after presiding over two federal criminal indictments of President Trump. (Image credit: Chip Somodevilla)
A new focus group of Biden-to-Trump voters weighs in on immigration operations and Trump's foreign affairs leadership on Greenland and Venezuela. (Image credit: Stephen Maturen)
A new focus group of Biden-to-Trump voters weighs in on immigration operations and Trump's foreign affairs leadership on Greenland and Venezuela. (Image credit: Stephen Maturen)
On paper, Venezuela has enough oil reserves to maintain production at current levels for more than 800 years, an enticing prospect for the White House as it pushes Big Oil to get the petrostate gushing again. But the South American nation’s claim that it sits atop more than 300 billion barrels, 17% of the world’s total and surpassing even Saudi Arabia, has long been questioned by some industry exp...
On paper, Venezuela has enough oil reserves to maintain production at current levels for more than 800 years, an enticing prospect for the White House as it pushes Big Oil to get the petrostate gushing again. But the South American nation’s claim that it sits atop more than 300 billion barrels, 17% of the world’s total and surpassing even Saudi Arabia, has long been questioned by some industry experts — including the very firm hired to help evaluate the resource under the late socialist icon Hugo Chávez . More realistic estimates peg Venezuela’s reserves at around a third or less than the marquee label. Proven reserves refer to the estimated amount of crude that with reasonable certainty can be commercially recovered under current economic, technological and regulatory conditions, a threshold that Venezuela’s veteran oil engineers and other experts have long maintained the country’s claim doesn’t meet. When Venezuela’s national oil company contracted a resource certification consultancy to evaluate the vast Orinoco Oil Belt in the late-2000s, experts say the Chávez government seized on — and embellished — the results to project political influence at home and abroad at a time of spiraling oil prices and resource nationalist fervor. The claim stuck and later helped the country to access more financing. “Some of the numbers that were accredited to our firm were not necessarily exactly what we were calculating,” said Herman Acuña, president of Houston-based Ryder Scott that assessed the full belt in stages from 2008 to 2011, using logs from Petróleos de Venezuela SA . Ryder Scott issued public clarifications at the time to highlight the contingent nature of the resources, he said. National oil companies like PDVSA sometimes “take liberties” with the data to showcase their countries’ potential, said Acuña, who headed up the project at the time. To be sure, even accounting for some fuzziness in the data and the sludgy nature of most Venezuelan oil, conservative estimates...
Jason Calacanis is one of Silicon Valley's most interesting personalities. Unlike many of his peers, Calacanis didn't rise to fame as a partner at a prestigious venture capital (VC) firm or co-founding a world-renowned start-up. Rather, the investor's roots were rather modest. In the early 2000s, Calacanis started his own blogging business. Just two years after its launch, AOL acquired the blog fo...
Jason Calacanis is one of Silicon Valley's most interesting personalities. Unlike many of his peers, Calacanis didn't rise to fame as a partner at a prestigious venture capital (VC) firm or co-founding a world-renowned start-up. Rather, the investor's roots were rather modest. In the early 2000s, Calacanis started his own blogging business. Just two years after its launch, AOL acquired the blog for a reported $25 million. During the past two decades, Calacanis has evolved from a relatively unknown entrepreneur to one of the most successful investors in modern day Silicon Valley . Although he's backed a number of unicorns , two of Calacanis' most famous moves were angel investments in both Uber Technologies and Robinhood Markets . Continue reading
UK Data Center Planning Hits Record High Amid Scramble For AI Infrastructure Via City AM, Data centre planning applications in England and Wales jumped 63% in 2025, driven largely by AI-related demand and investor enthusiasm. Developers are increasingly targeting unconventional sites, from abandoned hotels to former coal mines and landfills, to secure planning approval. Power availability and grid...
UK Data Center Planning Hits Record High Amid Scramble For AI Infrastructure Via City AM, Data centre planning applications in England and Wales jumped 63% in 2025, driven largely by AI-related demand and investor enthusiasm. Developers are increasingly targeting unconventional sites, from abandoned hotels to former coal mines and landfills, to secure planning approval. Power availability and grid constraints are likely to limit how many approved projects are ultimately built, encouraging “bring your own power” models. Data centre planning applications hit an all-time high in the UK in 2025, City AM can reveal, as investors rushed to gain a foothold in the burgeoning AI market. More than 60 separate planning applications for the construction of new data centres were filed in England and Wales over the course of the year, according to a City AM analysis of more than 300 local authority planning databases, representing an increase of 63 per cent compared to 2024 . The analysis excluded extensions to existing data centre sites, revisions to past applications and applications for other developments which included a data centre as part of the plans, meaning the true figure for the number of data centres seeking planning approval is likely to be significantly higher. The surge in applications lays bare the scale of the demand for compute by the nascent AI industry, with large language models requiring more and more power to operate, and property businesses racing to re-invent themselves as data centre developers to cash in on investor appetite. Dame Dawn Childs , chief executive of Pure Data Centres, told City AM : “With this AI bubble that everyone’s talking about…because of the increased valuations for powered land, everyone’s trying to get a piece of the pie, and that creates a bunch of fizziness. “We’re seeing lots of people who are sending out on a daily basis: ‘we’ve got this significant plot of land with all of these megawatts of power in the middle of nowhere, it’...
The French Trade Minister said Europe should not be weak in the face of US tariffs threats such as the threats on French wines and champagne. He also argued the Mercosur trade agreement is good for some sectors, despite the strong opposition from France to the trade deal. Nicolas Forissier spoke with Bloomberg’s Francine Lacqua on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. (Source: Bloomb...
The French Trade Minister said Europe should not be weak in the face of US tariffs threats such as the threats on French wines and champagne. He also argued the Mercosur trade agreement is good for some sectors, despite the strong opposition from France to the trade deal. Nicolas Forissier spoke with Bloomberg’s Francine Lacqua on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. (Source: Bloomberg)