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Asian markets declined on Tuesday after a sharp drop in U.S. stocks, driven by concerns over the economic impact of President Donald Trump’s latest round of tariffs, reports AP. A 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico took effect early Tuesday, while an additional 10% tariff was imposed on Chinese goods. In response, Beijing signalled through state media that it was considering retaliatory measures, potentially targeting U.S. agricultural exports such as soybeans. Women Entrepreneurs organize 3-day trade fair at Gulshan Shooting Club Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 1.9% to 37,084.83, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dropped 1.6% to 22,666.68. China’s Shanghai Composite slipped 0.2% to 3,310.35. In South Korea, the Kospi saw a slight gain of less than 0.1% to 2,533.77, while Taiwan’s Taiex declined 0.9%. Most Southeast Asian markets also registered losses. On Monday, the S&P 500 fell 1.8% to 5,849.72 after Trump declared there was “no room left” for negotiations to lower the tariffs, which he had previously delayed for further discussions. The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 1.5% to 43,191.24, while the Nasdaq composite dropped 2.6% to 18,350.19. Wall Street had hoped for a less severe trade stance, and Trump’s decision came amid growing concerns about the U.S. economy. Monday’s losses trimmed the S&P 500’s post-Election Day gains to just over 1%, down from a peak of more than 6%, as the initial optimism surrounding Trump’s economic policies faded. After the S&P 500 reached a record high last month, driven by stronger-than-expected corporate earnings, sentiment turned negative following weaker economic reports. Recent data showed declining consumer confidence in the face of inflation concerns linked to tariffs. Another economic report on Monday revealed that while U.S. manufacturing activity continued to expand, it did so at a slower pace than expected. More worryingly, new orders contracted while prices rose, sparking concerns over who would bear the costs of Trump’s tariffs. Kroger Chairman and CEO resigns following investigation into personal conduct Following the report, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 4.16% from 4.24%, continuing its decline from January’s high of nearly 4.80%, reflecting fears of an economic slowdown. Tech stocks, particularly Nvidia and other high-growth companies, bore the brunt of the market downturn. Nvidia plunged 8.8%, while Tesla lost 2.8%. Elsewhere, grocery giant Kroger fell 3% after CEO Rodney McMullen resigned following an internal investigation into his personal conduct. Cryptocurrency-linked stocks also retreated despite an initial rally spurred by Trump’s announcement over the weekend about a strategic crypto reserve. MicroStrategy, which has been investing heavily in bitcoin, ended 1.8% lower, while Coinbase dropped 4.6%. In Europe, markets surged on Monday following a report indicating a slowdown in inflation for February, boosting expectations of an interest rate cut from the European Central Bank later in the week. Germany’s DAX climbed 2.6%, and France’s CAC 40 rose 1.1%. Despite Trump’s “America First” stance, international markets have outperformed the S&P 500 this year. In early Tuesday trading, U.S. benchmark crude oil declined 30 cents to $68.07 per barrel, while Brent crude dropped 51 cents to $71.11 per barrel. The U.S. dollar weakened to 149.29 Japanese yen from 149.50 yen, while the euro edged down to $1.0484 from $1.0488. Bitcoin tumbled 10.3% to $83,750, according to CoinDesk.

Kroger Chairman and CEO Rodney McMullen has resigned after an internal investigation into his personal conduct. One of the largest grocery chains in the country said Monday that the investigation into McMullen's personal conduct was unrelated to the business, but was found to be inconsistent with its business ethics policy. Board member Ronald Sargent will serve as chairman and interim CEO, effective immediately. Sargent has been on Kroger's board since 2006 and has served as the lead director of the company since 2017. He's worked in several roles at the grocery chain across stores, sales, marketing, manufacturing and strategy. Sargent is also the former Chairman and CEO of Staples. Kroger said its board was made aware of the situation on Feb. 21 and immediately hired an outside independent counsel to conduct an investigation, overseen by a special board committee. Uruguay's new leftist president takes office, facing a financial balancing act The company said that McMullen’s conduct is not related to its financial performance, operations or reporting, and did not involve any Kroger associates. Kroger will conduct a search for its next CEO, with Sargent agreeing to remain as interim CEO until someone is appointed to the role permanently. Shares of Kroger, based in Cincinnati, fell about 1.3% before the opening bell.  

Yamandú Orsi, a telegenic left-leaning former mayor and history teacher, took office as Uruguay's new president on Saturday, at the helm of a government that has pledged to strengthen the social safety net while reversing years of economic stagnation. The inauguration of Orsi, 57, marks the return of Uruguay’s Broad Front — a center-left mix of moderates, communists and hardline trade unionists — after a five-year interruption by the country’s outgoing conservative president, Luis Lacalle Pou. Cheers erupted as Orsi recited the oath of office before Congress on Saturday in Uruguay’s capital of Montevideo. Outside the chamber, in the city's main square, thousands of Uruguayans watching his swearing-in on giant screens shouted in support. A civilized race The ceremony came three months after Orsi's presidential victory in a remarkably civilized election race between two moderates, praised as an antidote to the polarization gripping the region. In his speech, he took a dig at growing disillusionment with democratic norms across Latin America, which has resulted in a shift to the right, from neighboring Argentina to El Salvador. “We all know well that we have to treasure our democratic construction in times where exclusionary logic and expressions of distrust in traditional politics proliferate,” Orsi said in his inaugural address before a gathering of domestic and foreign leaders at the legislative palace in Montevideo. He declared: “Let us always be adversaries, but never enemies. And let us distance ourselves as far as possible from cynicism.” The night before the ceremony, Orsi dined in Montevideo with his like-minded regional counterparts, including Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Colombia's Gustavo Petro and Chile's Gabriel Boric. The friendly scene cemented Orsi as the latest in the region's swath of allied left-wing leaders — many of whom have struggled in recent years to combat rising inequality and stalling growth. Many Uruguayans saw Orsi as the nostalgia candidate, recalling the Broad Front's 15-year rule between 2005 and 2020. During that time, the coalition presided over a historic cycle of economic growth that reduced poverty and cemented the country's pro-business reputation. The coalition also launched pioneering social reforms that won Uruguay international acclaim, including the legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage and recreational marijuana. Wall Street falls sharply as Nvidia tumbles 8.5% and AI mania falters Problems emerge But in 2020, emerging problems like creeping inequality and surging crime ushered in Lacalle Pou’s center-right government on promises of reforming the bloated state. Last year, public frustration over the persistence of those problems helped bring Lacalle Pou’s tenure to an end, as an anti-incumbent wave swept across the globe. A cautious campaigner, Orsi — the former mayor of Canelones, a beach town known for its cattle ranches and high-tech — vowed to implement “safe change” for Uruguay’s 3.5 million people. Now he faces a difficult balancing act — between satisfying the demands of his more radical leftist constituents, which have called for unwinding some of the previous government's cost-cutting measures, while boosting competitiveness to spur much-needed economic development. “The country needs to recover a path of growth that generates not only a greater quantity but also quality of work,” he said. “That allows a floor of salary dignity and, with it, a better distribution of income.” With a fractious coalition, experts say many of Orsi's positions will become clear only after he takes office and is forced to make hard policy choices. A ‘watch-and-see attitude’ “The business community is taking a watch-and-see attitude until it’s clear whether Orsi is in charge or whether his more aggressive leftist base is in charge,” said Uruguayan economist Arturo C. Porzecanski, a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “If Orsi doesn’t come out on top and measures that set the clock back get passed, then that will dim the economic outlook for the coming years." Keeping a tight budget will make it difficult to meet expectations of the unionists that promoted a controversial referendum to increase pensions and reverse the former government’s decision to raise the legal retirement age from 60 to 65. Orsi acknowledged the challenge in his speech, saying: “A lot of dialogue, an outstretched hand and the ability to understand the different sensitivities expressed by our community will be necessary." Nvidia sales surge in the fourth quarter on demand for AI chips Last fall, Uruguayans shot down the proposed pension overhaul. Many praised the vote's outcome as a rare, level-headed rejection of budget-busting populism that has long beset the region. But union leaders — and their supporters, like Orsi’s Communist labor minister — have continued to press their demands, challenging Uruguay's investor-friendly reputation. “The diagnosis is concerning when it comes to workers and their commitment to resolving disputes,” Labor Minister Juan Castillo said last week, as powerful trade unions called a mass strike and multinational Japanese auto-part maker Yazaki shut down operations in Uruguay, citing high labor and production costs.

U.S. stock indexes fell sharply Thursday as Wall Street’s frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology faltered some more. The S&P 500 sank 1.6% for its fifth drop in six days after setting an all-time high last week. Concerns about the U.S. economy’s future have been behind much of the drop, including worries about how tariffs pushed by President Donald Trump could worsen inflation, and Wall Street’s main measure of health has lost all but 1.4% of its rally since Election Day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 193 points, or 0.4%, and the Nasdaq composite tumbled 2.8%. Weighing most heavily on the market was superstar stock Nvidia, one of Wall Street’s most influential companies that’s been leading the market for years. After initially rising at the open of trading following a better-than-expected profit report, Nvidia quickly slid to a loss of 8.5%. Better-than-expected earnings reports have become routine for Nvidia, whose chips are powering the surge into artificial-intelligence technology, but this was the company’s first since DeepSeek shook the entire AI industry. After the Chinese upstart said it developed a large language model that can compete with the world’s best without using the most expensive chips, Wall Street had to question all the spending it assumed would go into Nvidia’s chips and the ecosystem that’s built around the AI boom, such as electricity to power large data centers. Nvidia’s performance for the latest quarter, along with its forecasts for upcoming results, were “good enough to keep the debate moving in a positive direction,” according to analysts at UBS led by Timothy Arcuri. But it apparently wasn’t enough to send Nvidia’s stock higher, particularly given criticism that its price had already leaped too high, too quickly. After more than tripling two years ago, Nvidia’s stock more than doubled last year as its sales exploded. The market also soured on Salesforce, which fell 4% despite topping analysts’ profit expectations for the latest quarter. Several analysts called the performance solid, and the company continued to tout its AI offerings, but it gave a forecast for upcoming revenue that fell short of expectations. Judge gives Trump administration two days to release billions of dollars in blocked foreign aid One AI-related company bucking the trend was Snowflake. The AI data cloud company rose 4.5% after delivering stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It joined a range of stocks on the more staid end of Wall Street, ones that didn’t grab as many headlines as AI stocks in recent years. Despite the sharp loss for the overall S&P 500, close to 2 out of every 5 stocks in the index climbed. A 1.7% rise for Berkshire Hathaway, the company run by famed investor Warren Buffett, was one of the strongest upward forces on the index. The owner of Geico, BNSF railroad and other businesses has built a hoard of unused cash recently. That could indicate Buffett, who’s famous for buying stocks when prices are low, may not see much worth purchasing in a market that critics say looks too expensive. Some investors have been waiting for other stocks to pick up the market’s leadership baton from Nvidia and the handful of big stocks that dominated for years. Nvidia alone accounted for a little more than 22% of the entire total return for the S&P 500 index last year. All told, the S&P 500 fell 94.49 points to 5,861.57 Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 193.62 to 43,239.50, and the Nasdaq composite tumbled 530.84 to 18,544.42. In the bond market, Treasury yields swung following Trump’s latest announcement on tariffs. He said “the proposed TARIFFS scheduled to go into effect on MARCH FOURTH will, indeed, go into effect, as scheduled” for imports from Canada and Mexico. He also said he would add an additional 10% tariff on Chinese products on that date. Such moves could push up prices for U.S. households when inflation has already proven to be stubborn. Wall Street has been hoping the threats are merely leverage that Trump will use to negotiate with other countries before ultimately inflicting less pain on the economy than feared. But even if that proves to be the case, all the talk on tariffs has already gotten U.S. households to feel more nervous about the economy. That’s dangerous because their strong spending has been a main reason the U.S. economy has avoided a recession. Such uncertainty also pressures the Federal Reserve, which has few if any tools to help an economy where growth is slowing and inflation is rising at the same time. Jeff Schmid, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, said in a speech Thursday that he has “become more cautious” in his hopes that inflation will continue to ease. He also said that discussions with people in his district suggest “elevated uncertainty might weigh on growth” for the economy. Toyota reshuffles its board, adding auditors and outsiders For now, at least, the U.S. economy appears to be in solid shape. The government on Thursday left alone its estimate for the U.S. economy’s performance during the last three months of 2024, though it raised its estimate for a measure of inflation during the quarter. A separate report said more U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week. While the number is at a three-month high, it’s still nowhere close to where it’s been in past recessions. In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury edged up to 4.27% from 4.26% late Wednesday. In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed across Europe and Asia. Germany’s DAX lost 1.1%, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 added 0.3%.

Nvidia on Wednesday reported a surge in fourth-quarter profit and sales as demand for its specialized Blackwell chips, which power artificial intelligence systems, continued to grow, sending the company's stock higher after hours. For the three months that ended Jan. 26, the tech giant based in Santa Clara, California, posted revenue of $39.3 billion, up 12% from the previous quarter and 78% from one year ago. Adjusted for one-time items, it earned 89 cents a share. “Demand for Blackwell is amazing as reasoning AI adds another scaling law — increasing compute for training makes models smarter and increasing compute for long thinking makes the answer smarter,” Nvidia Founder Jensen Huang said in a statement. Nvidia has ramped up the massive-scale production of Blackwell AI supercomputers, Huang said, “achieving billions of dollars in sales in its first quarter.” “AI is advancing at light speed as agentic AI and physical AI set the stage for the next wave of AI to revolutionize the largest industries,” he said. Wednesday’s earnings report topped Wall Street expectations. Analysts had been expecting adjusted earnings of 85 cents a share on revenue of $38.1 billion, according to FactSet. Nvidia reported net income of $22.06 billion in the fourth quarter, beating analysts’ predictions of $19.57 billion. The tech giant expected sales to continue to grow, forecasting revenue of around $43 billion for the first quarter of fiscal 2026. Data center sales, which account for much of Nvidia’s revenues, were a core part of that uptick — fourth-quarter revenue was $35.6 billion, up 93% from one year ago. Toyota reshuffles its board, adding auditors and outsiders The growth in the data center market comes as President Donald Trump has talked up a joint venture investing up to $500 billion for infrastructure tied to AI through a new partnership formed by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank. The Stargate project will start building out data centers and the energy generation needed for the further development of AI, according to the White House. Nvidia is a partner in that project. On an earnings call Wednesday afternoon, Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said that fourth-quarter Blackwell sales exceeded the company's expectations. "We delivered $11 billion of Blackwell architecture revenue in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, the fastest product ramp in our company’s history," Kress said. “Blackwell sales were led by large cloud service providers which represented approximately 50% of our data center revenue.” The poster child of the AI boom, Nvidia has grown into the second-largest company on Wall Street — it is now worth over $3 trillion — and the stock’s movement carries more weight on the S&P 500 and other indexes than every company except Apple. Two years ago, Nvidia’s market value was below $600 billion. Nvidia and other companies benefiting from the AI boom have been a major reason the S&P 500 has climbed to record after record recently, with the latest coming last week. Their explosion of profits has helped to propel the market despite worries about stubbornly high inflation and possible pain coming for the U.S. economy from tariffs and other policies of President Donald Trump. But those tariffs are still “an unknown,” Kress said, until Nvidia can better understand what the Trump administration’s plan is. DBS Bank to cut 4,000 jobs as AI replaces human roles “We are awaiting,” she said, adding that the company would follow any export controls or tariff rules. The fourth-quarter earnings are the company’s first report since Chinese company DeepSeek boasted it had developed a large language model that could compete with ChatGPT and other U.S. rivals, but was more cost-effective in its use of Nvidia chips to train the system on troves of data. The frenzy over DeepSeek caused $595 billion in Nvidia’s wealth to vanish briefly. But the company in a statement commended DeepSeek’s work as “an excellent AI advancement” that leveraged “widely-available models and compute that is fully export control compliant.” “DeepSeek R1 has ignited global enthusiasm,” Huang said on Wednesday’s earnings call. “It’s an excellent innovation, but even more importantly, it has open-sourced a world-class reasoning AI model. Nearly every AI developer is applying R1, or chain of thought and reinforcement learning techniques like R1, to scale their models' performance.” Speaking to investors, Huang said the “next wave” of AI is coming with “agentic AI for enterprise, physical AI for robotics and sovereign AI as the different regions build out their AI for their own ecosystems.” "We’re in the center of much of this development," Huang said.

A federal judge on Tuesday gave the Trump administration less than two days to release billions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid, saying the administration had given no sign of complying with his nearly two-week-old court order to ease its funding freeze. The lawsuit was filed by nonprofit organizations over the cutoff of foreign assistance through the U.S. Agency for International Development and State Department, which followed a Jan. 20 executive order by President Donald Trump targeting what he portrayed as wasteful programs that do not correspond to his foreign policy goals. Nonprofit groups and businesses that receive federal money for work abroad said the freeze breaks federal law and has shut down funding for even the most urgent life-saving programs abroad. Those USAID and State partners say the administration has stiffed them on hundreds of millions of dollars in money already owed, forcing them to lay off tens of thousands of staffers and pushing some organizations toward financial ruin. U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali on Feb. 13 had ordered the administration at least temporarily to get funding flowing again, including to make good on its bills. Despite the order, USAID staffers and the businesses and nonprofit groups say they know of no payments that have gotten through. “I’m not sure why I can’t get a straight answer from you on this: Are you aware of an unfreezing of the disbursement of funds for those contracts and agreements that were frozen before Feb. 13," the judge asked Indraneel Sur, the lawyer for the government. “Are you aware of steps taken to actually release those funds?” “I’m not in a position to answer that,” Sur said. Trump administration creates registry for immigrants who are in the US illegally The case had been brought by the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Global Health Council, representing health organizations receiving U.S. funds for work abroad. They had asked Ali to find the Trump administration in contempt of his earlier order. It’s the second time a judge has found the Trump administration did not follow a court order. U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island also found this month that the administration had not fully unfrozen federal grants and loans within the U.S., even after he blocked sweeping plans for a pause on trillions of dollars in government spending.

Electricity providers across Chile scrambled to restore service Tuesday after a sweeping blackout plunged 90% of the country into darkness, stranding commuters, knocking cell service offline and paralyzing businesses and daily life. The scale of the power outage appeared to take authorities off guard. The government declared a state of emergency alongside a mandatory nighttime curfew that will last until 6 a.m. Wednesday. “Our first concern, and the reason for this announcement, is to ensure people’s safety,” Interior Minister Carolina Tohá said in announcing the exceptional measures. The ministry deployed thousands of soldiers across the country to help maintain order and enforce the curfew. Mobile phone services blinkered offline. The world’s largest copper mine suspended operations. People complained of water shortages as pumps running on electricity stopped working. Emergency generators helped hospitals and government offices continue operating. But the lights — and, on a hot summer night in the Southern Hemisphere, the air conditioning and fans that keep people cool — began to return in spurts seven hours after the electric failure first struck. Cheers rung out on the streets where lights flickered back on. At around 11 p.m., power was restored to around half of the 8 million affected households, said President Gabriel Boric. “What happened today is outrageous,” Boric said in a late-night televised address. “It's unacceptable that one or several companies impact the everyday life of millions of Chileans.” The National Electrical Coordinator, Chile’s grid operator, said a disruption had occurred in a high-voltage backbone transmission line that carries power from the Atacama Desert of northern Chile to the capital of Santiago in the country’s central valley. The operator's president, Juan Carlos Olmedo, said that the regional problem started a long-distance chain reaction of overloads and plant shutdowns until it became a giant blackout that hit 90% of Chile's 19 million people, from the northernmost Chilean port of Arica to the southern Los Lagos agricultural region. Why monkey is blamed for Sri Lanka’s nationwide power cut? “The electric system did not operate the way it should have," he said. The specific cause of the failure remains under investigation. Officials have ruled out a cyberattack or any kind of criminal activity. All over Chile, traffic lights darkened, trains stopped and ATMs shut down. Soccer matches were called off, classes were canceled and concerts postponed. Police officers and civilians worked together to direct traffic. Petrol stations were left unable to pump. Businesses, from restaurants and bars to movie theaters, lost money. Frantic crowds became stranded in stalled subway cars. Older adults fretted they would not be able to leave apartment buildings because elevators were out of order. “Everything has stopped, there's chaos,” said Jorge Calderón, a writer and resident of Santiago. Chile’s national disaster response service, Senapred, said the disruption in the power supply caused an outage across 14 of the country's 16 regions, including Santiago, a city of some 8.4 million people, where authorities said there would be no subway service until further notice. Tohá said hospitals, prisons and government buildings were using backup generators to keep essential equipment operating. Officials evacuated passengers from darkened tunnels and subway stations in Santiago and elsewhere in the country, including the coastal tourist hotspot of Valparaiso. Videos on social media shared from across Chile, a long ribbon of a country stretching 4,300 kilometers (over 2,600 miles) along the southern Pacific coast, showed mass confusion at intersections as traffic lights failed, people having to use their mobile phones as torches in the underground metro and police dispatched to help evacuate buildings. Tiny Kuwait, in grip of desert summer heat, announces power cuts after fuel disruption Transport Minister Juan Carlos Muñoz urged people to stay home, saying it’s “not a good time to go out since we have a transport system that is not operating normally" with just a fraction of the traffic lights functioning nationwide. Authorities at Santiago International Airport said terminals had switched to emergency power but warned that “some flights could be impacted.” Some copper mines in the Andean nation shut down for lack of electricity while others used auxiliary power to continue operations. The world’s biggest copper producer, state-owned mining company Codelco, said the power outage had “affected all operations,” without elaborating.

Toyota announced plans to restructure its board on Tuesday in what it described as an attempt to bring in more diverse views and give a larger roles to auditors. Among six appointments is Christopher Reynolds, now an executive in the automaker’s North American operations. As a lawyer, and son of a Ford worker, he brings experience in human resources and risk management, according to Toyota. The number of women on the 10-person board will grow from one to two with the appointments of Kumi Fujisawa, an independent outsider and entrepreneur, and Hiromi Osada, previously a Toyota auditor. George Olcott, previously an auditor, will also join the board. The number of outside members will rise from four to five. Takanori Azuma, a Toyota Human Resources official, said the new board includes auditors for the first time. DBS Bank to cut 4,000 jobs as AI replaces human roles The company's internal controls have come under scrutiny since it admitted to cheating on certification tests for seven vehicle models last year. Azuma said the additions are designed to bring diverse views to its leadership as “weapons for survival” in a changing environment. “It would be a mistake to assume that what we think up internally will be what our customers and people around the world can empathize with,” he said. The maker of the Camry sedan and Lexus luxury models has been trying to transform itself into what it calls “a mobility company” as the auto industry undergoes drastic changes including the arrival of powerful relative newcomers like Tesla and BYD. Chairman Akio Toyoda, from the company's founding family, and Chief Executive Koji Sato’s positions will remain unchanged. The company will seek approval for the new board at a general shareholders’ meeting later this year.

Singapore's largest bank, DBS, has announced plans to cut 4,000 jobs over the next three years as artificial intelligence (AI) takes over tasks currently performed by humans. A DBS spokesperson told the BBC that the reduction in workforce would occur through natural attrition as temporary and contract roles phase out over the coming years. However, permanent employees are not expected to be affected by the job cuts. Outgoing Chief Executive Piyush Gupta stated that the bank also plans to create approximately 1,000 new AI-related positions, making DBS one of the first major banks to provide specific details on how AI will impact its workforce and operations. DBS did not specify how many of the job cuts would take place in Singapore or which roles would be affected. The bank currently employs between 8,000 and 9,000 temporary and contract workers, with a total workforce of around 41,000 employees. Gupta highlighted that DBS has been working on AI for over a decade. "We currently deploy over 800 AI models across 350 use cases and expect the measured economic impact of these to exceed S$1 billion ($745 million) in 2025," he said. China's Alibaba sees revenue surge on back of artificial intelligence, e-commerce Gupta is set to step down at the end of March, with current Deputy Chief Executive Tan Su Shan set to take over his role. The increasing use of AI in various industries has raised concerns about its impact on employment. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) stated in 2024 that AI is expected to affect nearly 40% of all jobs worldwide. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva warned that "in most scenarios, AI will likely worsen overall inequality." Meanwhile, the Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, told the BBC last year that AI would not be a "mass destroyer of jobs," arguing that human workers will adapt to new technologies. Trump signs executive order on developing artificial intelligence 'free from ideological bias' Bailey acknowledged the risks associated with AI but emphasized its potential benefits. "There is great potential with it," he said. Source: With input from agency  

Order a Coke to wash down some hummus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank these days and chances are the waiter will shake his head disapprovingly — or worse, mutter “shame, shame” in Arabic — before suggesting the popular local alternative: a can of Chat Cola. Chat Cola — its red tin and sweeping white script bearing remarkable resemblance to the iconic American soft drink's logo — has seen its products explode in popularity across the occupied West Bank in the past year as Palestinian consumers, angry at America’s steadfast support for Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza, protest with their pocketbooks. “No one wants to be caught drinking Coke,” said Mad Asaad, 21, a worker at the bakery-cafe chain Croissant House in the West Bank city of Ramallah, which stopped selling Coke after the war erupted. “Everyone drinks Chat now. It’s sending a message.” Since Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack triggered Israel's devastating military campaign in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian-led boycott movement against companies perceived as supportive of Israel gained momentum across the Middle East, where the usual American corporate targets like McDonald’s, KFC and Starbucks saw sales slide last year. Here in the West Bank, the boycott has shuttered two KFC branches in Ramallah. But the most noticeable expression of consumer outrage has been the sudden ubiquity of Chat Cola as shopkeepers relegate Coke cans to the bottom shelf — or pull them altogether. “When people started to boycott, they became aware that Chat existed,” Fahed Arar, general manager of Chat Cola, told The Associated Press from the giant red-painted factory, nestled in the hilly West Bank town of Salfit. “I'm proud to have created a product that matches that of a global company." With the “buy local” movement burgeoning during the war, Chat Cola said its sales in the West Bank surged more than 40% last year, compared to 2023. Warren Buffett offers lessons on investing in his annual Berkshire Hathaway letter While the companies said they had no available statistics on their command of the local market due to the difficulties of data collection in wartime, anecdotal evidence suggests Chat Cola is clawing at some of Coca-Cola’s market share. “Chat used to be a specialty product, but from what we’ve seen, it dominates the market,” said Abdulqader Azeez Hassan, 25, the owner of a supermarket in Salfit that boasts fridges full of the fizzy drinks. But workers at Coca-Cola's franchise in the West Bank, the National Beverage Company, are all Palestinian, and a boycott affects them, too, said its general manager, Imad Hindi. He declined to elaborate on the business impact of the boycott, suggesting it can't be untangled from the effects of the West Bank's economic free-fall and intensified Israeli security controls that have multiplied shipping times and costs for Palestinian companies during the war. The Coca-Cola Company did not respond to a request for comment. Whether or not the movement brings lasting consequences, it does reflect an upsurge of political consciousness, said Salah Hussein, head of the Ramallah Chamber of Commerce. “It's the first time we've ever seen a boycott to this extent,” Hussein said, noting how institutions like the prominent Birzeit University near Ramallah canceled their Coke orders. “After Oct. 7, everything changed. And after Trump, everything will continue to change.” President Donald Trump’s call for the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, which he rephrased last week as a recommendation, has further inflamed anti-American sentiment around the region. With orders pouring in not only from Lebanon and Yemen but also the United States and Europe, the company has its sights set on the international market, said PR manager Ahmad Hammad. Hired to help Chat Cola cash in on combustible emotions created by the war, Hammad has rebranded what began in 2019 as a niche mom-and-pop operation. “We had to take advantage of the opportunity,” he said of the company's new “Palestinian taste” logo and national flag-hued merchandise. In its scramble to satisfy demand, Chat Cola is opening a second production site in neighboring Jordan. It rolled out new candy-colored flavors, like blueberry, strawberry and green apple. At the steamy plant in Salfit, recent college graduates in lab coats said that they took pains to produce a carbonated beverage that could sell on its taste, not just a customer’s sense of solidarity with the Palestinians. Afghan central bank puts on auction $20m to stabilise local currency “Quality has been a problem with local Palestinian products before,” said Hanna al-Ahmad, 32, the head of quality control for Chat Cola, shouting to be heard over the whir of machines squirting caramel-colored elixir into scores of small cans that then whizzed down assembly lines. “If it’s not good quality, the boycott won’t stick." Chat Cola worked with chemists in France to produce the flavor, which is almost indistinguishable from Coke’s — just like its packaging. That's the case for several flavors: Squint at Chat's lemon-lime soda and you might mistake it for a can of Sprite. In 2020, the Ramallah-based National Beverage Company sued Chat Cola for copyright infringement in Palestinian court, contending that Chat had imitated Coke's designs for multiple drinks. The court ultimately sided with Chat Cola, determining there were enough subtle differences in the can designs that it didn't violate copyright law. In the Salfit warehouse, drivers loaded “family size” packages of soda into trucks bound not only for the West Bank but also for Tel Aviv, Haifa and other cities in Israel. Staffers said that Chat soda sales in Israel's predominantly Arab cities jumped 25% last year. To broaden its appeal in Israel, Chat Cola secured kosher certification after a Jewish rabbi's thorough inspection of the facility. Still, critics of the Palestinians-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, say that its main objective — to isolate Israel economically for its occupation of Palestinian lands — only exacerbates the conflict. “BDS and similar actions drive communities apart, they don’t help to bring people together,” said Vlad Khaykin, the executive vice president of social impact and partnerships in North America for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization. “The kind of rhetoric being embraced by the BDS movement to justify the boycott of Israel is really quite dangerous.” While Chat Cola goes out of its way to avoid buying from Israel — sourcing ingredients and materials from France, Italy and Kuwait — it can't avoid the circumstances of Israeli occupation, in which Israel dominates the Palestinian economy, controls borders, imports and more. Deliveries of raw materials to Chat Cola’s West Bank factory get hit with a 35% import tax — half of which Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians. The general manager, Arar, said his company's success depends far more on Israeli bureaucratic goodwill than nationalist fervor. For nearly a month last fall, Israeli authorities detained Chat's aluminum shipments from Jordan at the Allenby Bridge Crossing, forcing part of the factory to shut down and costing the company tens of thousands of dollars. Ukrainians rally around their president after Trump seeks to denigrate him Among the local buyers left in the lurch was Croissant House in Ramallah, where, on a recent afternoon, at least one thirsty customer, confronting a nearly empty refrigerator, slipped to the supermarket next-door for a can of Coke. “It's very frustrating,” said Asaad, the worker. “We want to be self-sufficient. But we're not.”