Author: Arabian Media staff

This article is an on-site version of our FirstFT newsletter. Subscribers can sign up to our Asia, Europe/Africa or Americas edition to get the newsletter delivered every weekday morning. Explore all of our newsletters hereToday’s agenda: Big Tech lobbies against AI rules; US to delay TikTok ban again; Big Read on coal; Martin Wolf on Trump’s “big, beautiful” billGood morning. We start in the Middle East, where the question as the war enters its sixth day is whether the US will join Israeli military action against Iran. Here’s what we know. Will Trump get involved? The US president’s recent remarks…

In the third of this six-part series of The Economics Show, Martin Wolf, the FT’s chief economics commentator, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, discuss the global dangers facing the world economy and wonder what outcomes are possible at summits such as the G7 in a time of political and economic risk? Paul Krugman’s Cultural Coda:Peter Gabriel: “Games Without Frontiers”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xZmlUV8muY&list=RD3xZmlUV8muY&start_radio=1Martin Wolf’s Cultural Coda: “The Second Coming” – by William Butler Yeats, 1919https://youtu.be/QI40j17EFbISubscribe and listen to this series on The Economics Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Episodes are also available on the FT’s…

Big Oil remains split on the timeline for peak demand but in the meantime renewable technology from nuclear power to heat pumps and batteries is forging ahead, while architects are working on more sustainable buildings. There is still a question mark however over the supply of key raw materials: a problem the market alone cannot fix, says IEA chief Fatih Birol Source link

Ten years after the signing of the Paris climate accord, demand for coal is still growing — largely because of India and China — and shows no signs of peaking Source link

Just days after Premier Li Qiang called for “greater efforts” to halt a decline in China’s housing market, fresh data on Monday laid out why the country’s top leadership still has such cause for concern.New home prices across 70 Chinese cities fell 0.2 per cent in May from the previous month, while those of second-hand homes declined 0.5 per cent, according to a Financial Times analysis — the fastest pace of decline in seven and eight months respectively.Real estate investment was also down 10.7 per cent in the first five months of 2025, the data showed.Years after Chinese home prices…

Stellar: A World Beyond Limits, and How to Get There by James Arbib and Tony Seba (Stellar)Imagine a world without scarcity. It is the one Karl Marx imagined, when private property and the state would wither away. Arbib and Seba update this prophecy to take account of two technological innovations of our era, in electricity generation and storage from solar, wind and batteries, and the combination of artificial intelligence with robots. In this world, they argue, the ills of “extractive” societies — scarcity, coercion, conflict, hierarchy and environmental collapses — will disappear. Is this a plausible future? I leave that…

Image: CICC China International Capital Corporation (CICC), a leading China specialist investment bank, recently launched its Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) office — marking its first official presence in the Gulf region. In an interview with Gulf Business, Barry Chan, head of Asia-Australia Region, outlines how the firm aims to drive two-way capital flows within the China-GCC corridor, tapping into the Gulf’s trillion-dollar investment potential and growing appetite for cross-border collaboration. What prompted CICC to establish a presence in Dubai’s DIFC, and how does this move fit into your global growth strategy? CICC has long monitored the economic landscape of…

Donald Trump “may decide he needs to take further action” to stop Iran enriching uranium, vice-president JD Vance said on Tuesday.In comments on X, Vance, who has taken a more isolationist stance on foreign policy than many other Republicans, said Trump was “only interested in using the American military to accomplish the American people’s goals”.But he also wrote that the president “may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian [uranium] enrichment”, referring to the process that can produce both nuclear fuel and weapons-grade material.“That decision ultimately belongs to the president,” Vance added.His comments came less than an…

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the worldThe White House has said it will allow TikTok to continue operations in the US for another 90 days, extending a deadline for the popular Chinese-owned social media app to divest a stake in the platform to satisfy American law.“President [Donald] Trump will sign an additional executive order this week to keep TikTok up and running,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday. “As he has said many times, president Trump does not want TikTok to go dark.“This…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.HSBC is considering a global mandate to force employees back to the office at least three days a week, as the bank seeks to reconcile a patchwork of policies across its sprawling operations. Chief executive officer Georges Elhedery has discussed a group-wide return to office policy with executives across the bank’s businesses, according to people involved in the deliberations, with some managers expressing frustration that many employees are still mostly working from home. Discussions are ongoing and no decision has yet been made,…