Business

How did Jeffrey Epstein, a college dropout who started off teaching math and physics, make a huge fortune? At least at the beginning, the man from a working-class family in Coney Island, New York, had luck on his side. Through connections, Epstein got a job at investment bank Bear Stearns, which gave him insight into high finance. In 1980, he was made a limited partner. After five years, he left the bank but used his time there and contacts as a sign of credibility. Jeffrey Epstein was a man of mystery and finance After he left Bear Stearns, Epstein's name resurfaced in financial circles, but it was hard to say what he actually did. "He was a cypher," said Charles Gasparino, a senior correspondent at Fox Business Network in Netflix's 2020 documentary "Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich." N...

In the wake of Russia's war in Ukraine, the West has moved to cut off Moscow's oil and gas revenues — from US President Donald Trump hitting India with tariffs for buying Russian oil to the European Union vowing to phase out Russian gas imports "once and for all" by November 2027. But one Russian energy sector has avoided major sanctions: nuclear power.  "Nuclear is not nearly as big as the oil and gas business, so it hasn't received as much attention so far," said Sebastian Stier, author of the Russia Nuclear Interdependencies chapter in the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2025.  DW has analyzed data and spoken to experts to trace the current scope of Russia's influence in the nuclear energy sector beyond the country's own borders. Russia has been steadily expanding its global nu...

Paramount Skydance is poised to emerge as the winner in a monthslong bidding war to buy Warner Bros. Discovery after streaming giant Netflix declined to raise its takeover offer on Thursday. The board of Warner Bros. announced that Paramount's offer of $31-a-share (€26) was superior to the deal of $27.75 per share previously agreed on with Netflix for the storied Hollywood studio. Netflix on its part said that the revised bid from Paramount made the deal  "no longer financially attractive." "The transaction we negotiated would have created shareholder value with a clear path to regulatory approval," Netflix said in its statement. "However, we've always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance's latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, s...

The US government says it will pull AI startup Anthropic from Pentagon supply chains and rip up any agreements it has with it as the row between the two escalates sharply. US Under Secretary of Defense Emil Michael strongly rebuked Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Thursday, calling him a "liar" with a "God-complex." He said Amodei "wants nothing more than to try to personally control the US military and is ok putting our nation's safety at risk." The row follows a meeting earlier this week between Amodei and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, where — according to sources familiar with the meeting — Hegseth told Anthropic it had until Friday (February 27) to give the US military full access to its Claude model. If access is not given, Hegseth threatened to cut AI group Anthropic from gov...

Germany launched a major artificial intelligence (AI) project this month to cut its reliance on US providers of high-performance computing and data processing — a move seen as helping Europe to control its own AI future. The Industrial AI Cloud, backed by Deutsche Telekom, was built in record time, taking just six months to plan, build and launch, compared with the typical 12 to 24 months. The telecom firm repurposed and modernized an existing facility in Munich's Tucherpark, with nearly 10,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs — the high-end chips currently in global short supply. Telekom says the computing power is sufficient for all 450 million EU citizens using an AI assistant simultaneously. However, the Industrial AI Cloud isn't aimed at individual consumers. Instead, it targets Germany's ind...

Germany launched a major artificial intelligence (AI) project this month to cut its reliance on US providers of high-performance computing and data processing — a move seen as helping Europe to control its own AI future. The Industrial AI Cloud, backed by Deutsche Telekom, was built in record time, taking just six months to plan, build and launch, compared with the typical 12 to 24 months. The telecom firm repurposed and modernized an existing facility in Munich's Tucherpark, with nearly 10,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs — the high-end chips currently in global short supply. Telekom says the computing power is sufficient for all 450 million EU citizens using an AI assistant simultaneously. However, the Industrial AI Cloud isn't aimed at individual consumers. Instead, it targets Germany's ind...

Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine are in the midst of an spat over a key pipeline that supplies Russian crude to Central Europe.    Shipments through the Druzhba pipeline have stalled since the end of January. While Ukraine blames a Russian drone strike for the disruption, Hungary and Slovakia slam Kyiv for the prolonged outage. What to know about the pipeline? The Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline carries Russian crude through Belarus and Ukraine and into Central Europe. Opened in 1964, it is one of the largest oilpipelines in the world, connecting West Siberian oil fields to major refineries in Europe. The pipeline has the capacity to pump more than 2 million barrels per day but has been delivering only a fraction of it as most European countries turned away from Russian fossil fuels since M...

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's threat to cut AI group Anthropic from government supply chains, or possibly compel it to prioritize government orders, raises several serious questions. It's the latest example of Washington's strong-arm tactics in the corporate sector, while it also shows how control over AI models is becoming a new battleground. Hegseth has reportedly given Anthropic until Friday to give the US military full access to its applications, the latest escalation of an ongoing row between one of the world's top AI startups and the US government. So far, Anthropic has refused to give Washington complete access to its models for classified military use, including for potentially lethal missions carried out without human control and for domestic mass surveillance. US Defens...

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's threat to cut AI group Anthropic from government supply chains, or possibly compel it to prioritize government orders, raises several serious questions. It's the latest example of Washington's strong-arm tactics in the corporate sector, while it also shows how control over AI models is becoming a new battleground. Hegseth has reportedly given Anthropic until Friday to give the US military full access to its applications, the latest escalation of an ongoing row between one of the world's top AI startups and the US government. So far, Anthropic has refused to give Washington complete access to its models for classified military use, including for potentially lethal missions carried out without human control and for domestic mass surveillance. US Defens...

Germany launched a major artificial intelligence (AI) project this month to cut its reliance on US providers of high-performance computing and data processing — a move seen as helping Europe to control its own AI future. The Industrial AI Cloud, backed by Deutsche Telekom, was built in record time, taking just six months to plan, build and launch, compared with the typical 12 to 24 months. The telecom firm repurposed and modernized an existing facility in Munich's Tucherpark, with nearly 10,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs — the high-end chips currently in global short supply. Telekom says the computing power is sufficient for all 450 million EU citizens using an AI assistant simultaneously. However, the Industrial AI Cloud isn't aimed at individual consumers. Instead, it targets Germany's ind...