Flagship

White House halts anti-bribery law

US President Donald Trump ordered the Department of Justice to halt enforcement of a 48-year-old law barring American companies from bribing foreign governments. The move will allow US businesses to compete with countries not bound by similar rules: “It’s going to mean a lot more business for America,” Trump said after signing the executive order. A Trump-appointed US attorney also ordered federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, who was accused of taking bribes from Turkey. The administration’s shift on anti-corruption laws is the latest assault on long-held norms: A judge said the White House defied a court order to unfreeze federal payments, foreshadowing a likely struggle between the government’s executive and judicial branches.

OpenAI rejects Musk’s bid to buy it

OpenAI boss Sam Altman rejected a $97.4 billion bid from an Elon Musk-led consortium to buy the ChatGPT maker. Musk and Altman founded OpenAI together in 2015 as a nonprofit, but Musk left in 2018 and Altman has since begun restructuring the company into a for-profit enterprise — which Musk argues means it is abandoning its principles of developing artificial intelligence for humanity’s benefit. Musk said in a statement it was time for OpenAI to become an “open-source, safety-focused force for good” again, although his own AI company xAI is run for profit. Altman responded by flatly rejecting the approach and jokingly offering to buy X, Musk’s social media firm, for $9.74 billion.

Trump and Jordan’s king set for tense meet

US President Donald Trump will meet Jordan’s King Abdullah in what is set to be a tense encounter. Trump has suggested he may seek to take control of Gaza and force its more than two million citizens to move to neighboring Arab nations. Abdullah has previously said his country would not take the refugees, Al-Monitor reported, prompting Trump to threaten withholding US aid to Jordan — where it makes up 12% of the country’s budget — as well as to Egypt. However, a fresh influx of people to Jordan, which is already home to more than 2.4 million Palestinians, could also prove destabilizing. Despite being the first Arab leader to meet Trump in his second term, “this visit is more a burden than an honour,” The Economist wrote.

Venezuelan migrants deported from US

Two flights carrying Venezuelan migrants deported from the US arrived in the Latin American country. The flights are part of a push from Washington to repatriate hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who fled their homeland amid an economic crisis and President Nicolás Maduro’s sweeping crackdown on dissent. However, experts have warned that mass deportations could hurt the US economy by hitting industries that rely on migrant labor such as agriculture and manufacturing, many of which are based in states that voted for President Donald Trump. “If there’s no immigrant labour, there’s no milk, no cheese, no butter, no ice cream,” a dairy farmer in Wisconsin told the Financial Times. “We’ll all have to go vegan.”

Migrant mass graves found in Libya

​​Two mass graves discovered in Libya held nearly 50 bodies, thought to be mostly migrants attempting to reach Europe. Separately, 76 migrants were freed from a Libyan trafficking center. Wracked by domestic turmoil and split between rival governing factions, Libya has become the main transit point for African and Middle Eastern migrants attempting to reach Europe, The Associated Press reported. While most African economies are forecast to grow strongly in 2025, the earnings gap with Europe remains huge, justifying the risks of migration for many. Meanwhile recent figures show the EU, with its rapidly aging population, needs at least a million migrants a year to make up for a demographic shortfall.

Orbán to meet with Germany’s AfD

The co-leader of the hard-right German party Alternative for Germany (AfD) will meet Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán today, a sign both of AfD’s growing acceptance and of Orbán’s willingness to snub European norms. This month’s election is expected to see the AfD become the second-biggest party in the Bundestag: There is a longstanding agreement among mainstream German parties to maintain a “firewall” around it, but rising anti-refugee sentiment and the AfD’s increasing popularity has weakened the wall. A European Union leader inviting the AfD to a meeting is a further sign of cracks, although even Orbán has said there are “crazy people” in the party, and that associating with it could strain ties with other European leaders.

Row over obesity drugs for children

A storm is brewing over whether to prescribe weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy to children. Obesity rates have tripled worldwide since 1975, costing health services trillions, with childhood obesity growing even faster. GLP-1 drugs have proven very successful in reducing adult obesity and are now a roughly $50 billion global market. But none has been approved for children under 12 — although trials are underway — and health professionals are divided over whether the drugs should be given. “Is it the right way to go to medicalise very young children with drugs?”, one physician asked the Financial Times, although he cautiously thought the benefits outweighed the risks.

Japan investment in US hits record

Japanese foreign direct investment in the US hit a record $77 billion last year, highlighting Tokyo’s fraying ties with China. Japanese investment in China has fallen around 60% in the past decade as geopolitical tensions rise and Chinese economic growth slows, an analyst told Nikkei Asia. The data was published shortly after Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba met with US President Donald Trump in Washington, with Ishiba expressing “optimism” that his country would avoid US tariffs. However analysts believe Ishiba could play a bigger role in US-Asian relations than his predecessors: The Japanese leader could show Washington “the value Tokyo can add in reining China in,” a Bloomberg Japan columnist wrote.

Chinese film breaks box office records

A Chinese animated movie became the first non-Hollywood release to gross $1 billion in a single market. Ne Zha 2, a sequel to a 2019 film, is based on a 16th-century novel of Chinese mythology, in which a demon takes on various gods and monsters. A state-run newspaper said its success was a symbol of China’s “growing cultural confidence,” and that the country can now tell its own stories rather than rely on Disney films like Mulan. But China’s film industry is struggling: Box office sales fell 23% last year, The New York Times reported, despite Beijing’s efforts to boost a flagging economy. Moviegoing is heavily tied up with consumer spending in China, since most theaters are in malls.

Conservation dilemma over snake

Britain has a new, or perhaps old, snake species, raising questions about the purpose of conservation. There were just three species of snake in the UK, but accidental releases of the nonvenomous Aesculapian snake, including into a London canal, have created thriving populations. Some conservationists argue they are an invasive species, although they lived in Britain 300,000 years ago. But two academics wrote in The Conversation that Aesculapians are struggling in their southern European heartlands, and while conservationists “normally focus on preserving species within their modern ranges,” climate change makes that increasingly untenable. It would be “tragic” if the species went extinct elsewhere while being “treated as undesirable aliens” and evicted from its new home.

• EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen meets US Vice President JD Vance in Paris.
• French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visit Marseille to open a new consulate.
• Pakistan’s president inaugurates a newly revamped stadium in Karachi ahead of the ICC Champions Trophy.

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The age of a Stradivarius violin which sold for $10 million at auction last week. There is a booming market for the great Italian violinmaker Antonio Stradivari’s instruments, The New York Times reported: The record at public auction is $15.9 million, for a violin once owned by the granddaughter of Lord Byron, and others have gone for up to $20 million at private sales. The instrument sold last week once belonged to the 19th-century Hungarian prodigy Joseph Joachim, and was held by the New England Conservatory, which would allow favored students to borrow it for a year or two at a time.

Shingo, Miami. Florida’s biggest city has become a hub for omakase restaurants in recent years, the Financial Times noted. The city’s “love affair with these Japanese establishments — where menus are a surprise and guests are left entirely in the hands of the chef” — is 15 years old, but has gathered pace since 2021. Shingo is one of the finest, the FT said: The dining experience is “sincere, thoughtful and truly welcoming,” run by a fourth-generation Osaka sushi chef, and the kawahagi (trigger fish) is “melt-in-your-mouth.” Make a reservation at Shingo here.

The South African government is considering ways for Elon Musk’s companies to invest in the country without complying with the nation’s Black empowerment rules, three people familiar with the matter told Semafor.

South African officials are discussing how Musk’s companies could sidestep rules that would require at least 30% of any South African operation to be owned by Black locals.