Author: arthursheikin@gmail.com

Washington CNN  —  By week’s end, it’ll be much clearer how the US economy is holding up amid President Donald Trump’s sweeping policy changes. Trump’s erratic trade war has already unsettled consumers and taken a toll on economic growth — mostly due to American businesses rushing to stock up on imports. And his “big, beautiful” tax bill currently moving through Congress, which is expected to dramatically widen the country’s deficit, has roiled the bond market. But what matters for the underlying health of the broader economy is whether demand — for goods, services and homes — continues to chug along…

From OpenAI’s 4o to Stable Diffusion, AI foundation models that create realistic images from a text prompt are now plentiful. In contrast, foundation models capable of generating full, coherent 3D online environments from a text prompt are only just emerging. Still, it’s only a question of when, not if, these models will become readily available. Now one of Europe’s most prominent AI 3D model researchers, Matthias Niessner, has taken an entrepreneurial leave of absence from his visual computing & AI lab at the Technical University of Munich to found a startup working in the area: SpAItial.  Formerly a cofounder at…

Before fintech company Plaid became an essential link between banks and digital finance apps like Venmo, Robinhood, and Coinbase, its founders made a risky gamble.Founded in 2013, Plaid’s leaders recognized a gap. While consumers had the right to access their financial data, banks didn’t have official application program interfaces for companies like Plaid to access the data on behalf of their customers.To get in, Plaid relied on a practice known as “screen scraping,” essentially logging into users’ bank accounts with their usernames and passwords to retrieve data.Screen scraping can raise privacy and security concerns because it requires sharing sensitive login…

London CNN  —  Tesla’s sales plummeted by more than half across the European Union last month even as the bloc’s overall electric car market grew. New registrations for Tesla (TSLA) vehicles fell nearly 53% across the EU in April compared with the same month in 2024, according to data released Tuesday by the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA). Across the broader region — which includes the United Kingdom, Norway and Switzerland — sales cratered by 49% that same month compared to last year, the data showed. It marks the fourth consecutive month of declining annual sales for Tesla in Europe…

Russian leader Vladimir Putin signaled punishment on Monday for Western tech firms still operating within his country’s borders.”You just have to strangle them. I agree completely,” Putin said at a meeting in the Kremlin with Russian business leaders.”I say it without any embarrassment, because they are trying to strangle us. We need to reciprocate. That’s it,” he said.Putin made the remark after Stanislav Yodkovsky, who runs a Russian company offering videoconferencing services, said at the meeting that some of his Western competitors still had services available in Russia in some capacity.”Slightly limit the work of services that have left Russia,…

New York CNN  —  Tinned fish in America no longer means a sad, forgotten can of tuna collecting dust in the pantry. And Americans looking to save money in the face of economic headwinds are fueling their soaring popularity. Social media users are proudly posting a mosaic of gourmet ocean-dwellers plucked from waters off the coasts of countries like Spain and Italy, with vibrant packaging that evokes a Mediterranean seaside vacation. Try a lemon caper mackerel over poached egg and toast, or chop up spicy sardines over bruschetta and balsamic, they encourage. Even Trader Joe’s, long a mainstream cultural bellwether,…

The European Union is going after Shein, accusing it of deceiving customers with fake discounts and misleading information.The European Commission said in a Monday statement it had investigated the Chinese fast-fashion company, along with other consumer rights watchdogs in Belgium, France, Ireland, and the Netherlands.According to the statement, the investigation revealed that Shein had engaged in multiple practices “in breach of EU law.” These included offering fake discounts, pressuring customers to buy products with false purchase deadlines, using deceptive product labels, making misleading sustainability claims, and hiding contact details of customer service agents from customers.It also said Shein was feeding…

It’s not your imagination, graduating seniors. The tech industry’s pullback from entry-level hiring has reached concerning levels. LinkedIn’s chief economic opportunity officer, Aneesh Raman, warned in The New York Times last week that “bottom rung of the career ladder” is “breaking” as AI eliminates traditional stepping-stone positions. The numbers are eye-opening: hiring of new grads by the 15 largest tech companies has plummeted over 50% since 2019, according to a report released this month by the venture firm SignalFire, which found that before the pandemic, graduates comprised 15% of Big Tech hires, a figure that has dropped to just 7%. …

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.EU regulators are planning their first stress test to look for vulnerabilities in the financial system outside of banks, reflecting fears about the rapid growth of less regulated groups such as hedge funds and private equity.The plans by European authorities to examine the impact on the wider financial system of a potential market crisis, which would also include pension funds and insurers, follow a similar debut exercise by the Bank of England last year.Officials at the EU’s main financial watchdogs are still…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The UK government is shifting to shorter-term borrowing to lower its interest bill as a global debt sell-off adds to the pressure on its tax and spending plans.Jessica Pulay, head of the UK’s Debt Management Office, said the agency was softening a reliance on long-term borrowing that has made the country an outlier among major global bond markets, amid falling demand from institutional investors. Shorter-term debt is currently cheaper to take out — an important consideration for a country whose issuance costs…