Business

In his New Year's address to the armed forces, French President Emmanuel Macron unveiled a plan to add €36 billion to the country's multi-year defence budget in its next update, as he said France needed to be more powerful in order to be feared amid rising geopolitical tensions. We take a closer look.

Elon Musk's xAI says its Grok AI chatbot will be restricted from generating sexualised images of real people after it was used to create pictures of women and children in varying states of undress. Also in this edition: France's traditional Epiphany cake gets subsidised for Celiac disease sufferers.

Tourists visiting France from outside the European Union now have to pay significantly higher entrance fees at some of the most popular sites in the country: €10 more at the Louvre museum and €3 more at the Palace of Versailles. This after a recent daytime heist at the Louvre exposed shortcomings in its maintenance and security systems. Plus, Ryanair's CEO has blasted what he called "stupid" passenger taxes in Brussels and said the company would reduce its flights to the city by 10 percent this year. 

China's customs administration unveiled its latest trade data this Wednesday and announced that the country saw a record trade surplus last year, topping $1.19 trillion, which is about 20 percent higher than in 2024. Exports continued to surge, showing the Chinese economy's reliance on supplying external markets as domestic consumption fails to pick up. Also in this edition, iconic New York department store brand Saks Global files for bankruptcy.

US President Donald Trump says inflation in the country is low enough for Fed chair Jerome Powell to deliver "a big, beautiful cut" to interest rates. US consumer prices rose 2.7% in December, still significantly above the Federal Reserve's 2% target. Meanwhile, the heads of global central banks come together in support of Powell, after the Justice Department's criminal investigation against him raised concerns over the Fed's independence. 

US President Donald Trump ramped up economic pressure on the Iranian regime on Monday by announcing he was imposing import duties on the goods of any country that trades with Tehran. The move could further disrupt US trade relationships with global economies like China and India. Also in this edition, we look at the global ramifications of any perceived attacks on the independence of the US Federal Reserve, as the Trump administration launches a criminal probe into Fed chair Jerome Powell. 

Criticism has been pouring in from Republican and Democratic lawmakers, former Fed chairs and top officials after the US Justice Department launched a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell. After Powell described the move as retaliation against the Fed for not lowering interest rates as quickly as US President Donald Trump wanted, concern over the central bank's independence pushed prices of safe-haven assets like gold and silver higher.  

US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is under criminal investigation by the Justice Department, a probe he calls a "pretext" amid a pressure campaign by President Donald Trump to cut interest rates. Also in this edition: Germany's chancellor travels to India to boost trade ties as exports to China slump.

The EU is set to pass a trade deal with South American trade bloc Mercosur after Brussels unveiled new concessions this week. Also in this edition: HSBC has agreed to pay nearly €268 million to the French treasury to settle a case over fraud on dividend tax payments. Plus, a protest from hundreds of UK pubs over higher business rates seems to have been successful.

US President Donald Trump has called for the US military budget to reach $1.5 trillion in 2027, more than half of the allocated spending for this year, in a bid to build a "dream military" in "troubled and dangerous times". He also vowed to crack down on US defence firms who privilege payouts to shareholders and executives instead of investing in building new manufacturing plants. Plus, China's AI startup sector gets its litmus test with a string of stock market launches this week.