Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world The film’s reputation has waned a little over the decades but one scene in Citizen Kane still works. The protagonist, a tycoon who owns a newspaper, wants to stir up war in Cuba. … Read more
Japan’s Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama stood at the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Jan. 5 and declared 2026 a “digital year,” framing traditional exchanges as the primary gateway for investors to access cryptoassets and ETF-like products. As Elliptic noted, she pointed to US spot Bitcoin ETFs as a model, explicitly stating what Japan’s Financial Services Agency … Read more
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The US and its allies are running near-continuous surveillance flights close to an oil tanker in the north Atlantic with links to Russia, Venezuela and Iran, amid reports that Moscow has sent a submarine to … Read more
For this week’s Infinite Scroll column, Brady Brickner-Wood is filling in for Kyle Chayka. Late last year, the White House’s social-media team lauded ICE’s torrential deportation efforts with a string of memes seemingly engineered to go viral. In one video posted to Instagram, the song “all-american bitch,” by Olivia Rodrigo, provides a soundtrack to a … Read more
He goes on to say that to behead a corpse is to follow the path of Satan, and that it is God, not a lip-smacking corpse, who holds power over life and death. But the pastor seems to know that merely forbidding corpse-killing is not enough to stop it. The superstitious beliefs need to be … Read more
Ethereum and Solana are not only separated by questions of scalability, they are increasingly divided by competing visions of what blockchain networks must be built to withstand in the future. Recent remarks from the co-founders of each network revealed two competing definitions of “resilience,” rooted in different assumptions about risk, infrastructure and the future shape … Read more
Elon Musk’s xAI has raised $20B in its latest funding around, amid backlash over chatbot Grok creating sexualized imagery of women and children. The company said the Series F funding round had exceeded a $15B target, with investors including Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX and Baron … Read more
Barclays, one of the world’s largest banks and a systemically important global financial institution, has made its first investment in a stablecoin-related company. The United Kingdom-based bank said Wednesday it had invested in Ubyx, a US stablecoin clearing platform that aims to connect regulated issuers with banks and fintech companies. Barclays did not disclose the … Read more
Jennifer Aniston’s singular, signature hair has, for decades, propeled women to the hair salon chair. The “Rachel”—a layered, dark blonde, shoulder-length ’do with face-framing pieces—sits pride of place in pop culture’s hair hall of fame. But Jen An is reminding us that her iconic hairstyle is far from natural. In a video shared to her … Read more
RAKBank is preparing to join the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE’s) fast-evolving stablecoin ecosystem after receiving in-principle approval on Wednesday from the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates (CBUAE) to issue a UAE dirham-backed payment token. In-principle approval means the CBUAE has agreed to RAKBank’s stablecoin plans subject to final regulatory and operational conditions, and … Read more