US Business

Ukraine’s first lady called on Tuesday for IT specialists to help her country by building technology that saves lives rather than ending them.

Olena Zelenska told thousands of investors, entrepreneurs and tech workers gathered for the annual Web Summit in Portugal that Russia “puts technology at the service of terror”.

She showed slides of the aftermath of drone attacks in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and urged the delegates to use their skills to make a positive change instead.

Her husband, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, appeared as a hologram at several tech events earlier this year to directly appeal to companies to help rebuild his country with advanced tech infrastructure.

Zelenska, who has made in-person appearances at several events recently and addressed US Congress in July, said she would not make a detailed appeal.

Instead, the 44-year-old, a screenwriter by profession, highlighted the key role that technology was playing in the Russian invasion of her country.

She cited a Bellingcat report that alleged Russian IT workers were playing an active part in the war effort.

“Some IT specialists in Russia have made their choice to be aggressors and murderers,” she said, urging the audience to make the opposite choice.

“I believe that technology should be used to create, save and help people, not destroy them.”

Her 15-minute speech drew a standing ovation from the audience.

The organisers of the Web Summit had earlier become embroiled in a row over an invitation they had extended to people from Grayzone, a journalism website that regularly reflects pro-Russian conspiracy theories about the conflict.

The conference cancelled the invites, provoking a huge row on social media between users who said it was an infringement of free speech and those who supported the decision.

Some 70,000 people are expected to attend the Lisbon conference over the next three days.

Uber will pay British authorities 615 million pounds (around $700 million) to settle a tax dispute following a British judicial ruling that classified drivers as workers, the company said Tuesday.

The ride-hailing company disclosed the agreement with HM Revenues and Customs as it reported third-quarter results, saying the cash payment will be sent to authorities in the fourth quarter.

The settlement is the latest ripple effect from a major March 2021 ruling by Britain’s Supreme Court classifying Uber drivers as employees, rejecting the Silicon Valley company’s contention that the drivers should be categorized as self-employed.

As a result of that decision, British authorities had argued that Uber was on the hook for VAT taxes for the period prior to March 2022 when it operated in the United Kingdom. Uber began paying the levy in March. 

In May 2021, Uber reached an agreement with a British trade union to represent its 70,000 drivers in the UK.

New Twitter head Elon Musk said Tuesday the site will charge $8 per month to verify users’ accounts, arguing the plan would solve the platform’s issues with bots and trolls while creating a new revenue stream for the company.

The announcement comes only days after the world’s wealthiest man took sole control of the social media giant in a contentious $44 billion deal.

“Power to the people! Blue for $8/month,” Musk, who has styled himself as a free-speech champion, tweeted, in reference to the platform’s paid subscription service, Twitter Blue.

Under the new plan, paid subscribers would receive Twitter’s famous blue checkmark that signals a verified, authentic account.

That feature is currently offered only to public figures, an approach Musk described as a “lords & peasants system.”

He said Twitter Blue subscribers would also receive “priority” placement in “replies, mentions & search,” which he called “essential to defeat spam/scam.”

There would also be expanded video abilities, fewer ads, and the possibility for users to get a “paywall bypass for publishers willing to work with us,” he said.

Twitter Blue currently allows users to access certain news sites for free and without ads, such as the Los Angeles Times.

“This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators,” Musk tweeted.

Addressing the worries of some Twitter users that their blue check mark would lose its notoriety, he also announced “a secondary tag below the name for someone who is a public figure, which is already the case for politicians.”

The Twitter Blue service currently offers various other premium features, such as allowing subscribers to edit their tweets.

The new plan’s pricing, up from the current $5 per month, would be adjusted by country “proportionate to purchasing power parity,” Musk added in a reply to his original tweet.

Musk re-tweeted and replied to users praising the paid-verification idea, saying the move “will destroy the bots.” 

“If a paid Blue account engages in spam/scam, that account will be suspended,” Musk wrote.

– ‘Need to pay the bills’ –

For users that currently have blue check marks, Musk is considering removing them if they do not pay for the new service, tech news outlet The Verge reported.

Some users warned that they would simply leave the site if they were made to pay.

The SpaceX and Tesla chief floated the $8 subscription fee idea earlier Tuesday in a tweet reply to author Stephen King, who was complaining about media reports that the verification service could cost $20 per month.

“We need to pay the bills somehow!” Musk responded.

“Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?”

The proposal is only one part of a series of sweeping changes the 51-year-old entrepreneur has implemented at Twitter, with the entire board, including  CEO Parag Agrawal, let go last week.

The Washington Post has reported that Musk, whose account bio currently reads “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator,” plans to fire some 75 percent of his company’s 7,500 employees.

Musk financed the massive deal through a mixture of his own wealth, money from other investment groups and loans from banks which will have to be reimbursed.

His previous comments condemning Twitter’s content moderation policies as heavy-handed — as well as his frequent posts of boundary-testing memes — has given pause to some advertisers, currently the company’s main source of revenue.

Some users have expressed fear Twitter could turn into a global stage for hate speech and disinformation.

He tried to calm the nerves by reassuring over the weekend that the site would not become a “free-for-all hellscape,” and announced the formation of a content moderation council.

However on Sunday, Musk himself tweeted an anti-LGBT conspiracy theory about what happened the night US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked, then hours later deleted the post.

Some of the world’s top bankers will attend a Hong Kong finance summit on Wednesday, defying criticism by US lawmakers over their decision to share a stage with the city’s leader who is sanctioned by Washington.

Hong Kong is hosting a week of high profile events after lifting years of pandemic travel curbs that tarnished the city’s business-friendly reputation, sparked an exodus of talent and battered its economy.

The marquee event is a summit on Wednesday attended by some 200 finance executives including some of Wall Street’s leading luminaries.

Among those due to speak are Goldman Sachs head David Solomon, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, Blackrock president Rob Kapito and JP Morgan Chase counterpart Daniel Pinto.

The glitzy gathering at the Four Seasons hotel is being heralded by Hong Kong leader John Lee, who will give the opening speech, as proof that the previously shuttered Asian finance hub is back in business.

“After three years of pandemic, Hong Kong is reconnecting with the world,” Lee told reporters on Tuesday.

But the event is not without controversy.

The leaders of the bipartisan US Congressional-Executive Commission on China have called on Wall Street executives not to attend, accusing them of “whitewashing human rights violations” and giving political cover to Lee.

Lee, a former security chief who took office this year, is among Chinese officials sanctioned by Washington for cracking down on rights in Hong Kong after huge democracy protests, unable to hold accounts with the same banking giants attending the summit.

The row illustrates the tightrope faced by multinationals in Hong Kong, which is both a lucrative business gateway for China and a flashpoint in increasingly tense relations between Beijing and Western powers.

JP Morgan’s asset and wealth management head Mary Callahan Erdoes described Hong Kong as a “super-connector” for businesses wanting to access China, adding that the city “never disappeared” during the pandemic.

“There hasn’t been a city in the East that has emerged in the same way that Hong Kong has,” she told the South China Morning Post in an interview published Tuesday.

– Unsettled economic waters –

The summit comes at a time of uncertainty over China’s economy under President Xi Jinping.

Xi, who secured a norm-breaking third term last month, has overseen regulatory crackdowns clipping the wings of some major Chinese companies and is still sticking to a strict zero-Covid strategy.

Hong Kong’s China-dependent economy saw gross domestic product plunge 4.5 percent in the third quarter of this year, according to preliminary figures released Tuesday.

Its stock exchange is among the world’s worst performers, down more than 50 percent this year to levels last seen in 2009.

Lee’s opening speech will be followed by recorded interviews with three mainland officials involved in regulation, including Yi Gang, the governor of China’s central bank.

That will be followed by a panel titled “Navigating Through Uncertainty” featuring senior executives from Morgan Stanley, Blackstone, UBS, Goldman Sachs and Bank of China president Liu Jin.

Hong Kong finance chief Paul Chan is also expected to give a speech but it is unclear if he will be able to attend in person after he caught the coronavirus overseas.

While Hong Kong scrapped mandatory quarantine in September — a key demand of businesses — it maintains layers of pandemic restrictions long since abandoned by almost everywhere else.

Overseas arrivals must undergo frequent testing and are unable to go to bars and restaurants for their first three days in the city.

Restrictions on various gatherings remain and masks are compulsory, including outdoors. 

Lawyers in Britain on Tuesday took the first step towards what they said was “groundbreaking” legal action against Russia’s shadowy Wagner group over allegations it has committed “terrorism” in Ukraine.

The proposed legal move is aimed at uncovering billions of dollars in reparations for victims of the mercenary fighters. 

Wagner emerged in 2014 in Ukraine and is suspected by the West of doing the Kremlin’s dirty work in countries such as Syria and the Central African Republic — a charge Russia has always denied.

Jason McCue, senior partner at McCue Jury and Partners, said Wagner and its alleged boss Yevgeny Prigozhin “engaged in a campaign of terrorism” in Ukraine including murder, rape, the targeting of infrastructure and the planting of explosives around nuclear facilities.

“Their purpose was to spread terror and chaos in Ukraine,” he told Britain’s House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday.

Ukrainian officials have said Wagner has been sending thousands of soldiers recruited in Russian prisons to the front line, with the promise of a salary and an amnesty.

According to communications intercepted by German intelligence, Wagner group mercenaries may have been involved in atrocities in the Ukrainian town of Bucha soon after the invasion on February 24.

– ‘Courageous Ukrainian victims’ –

McCue told the lawmakers Wagner had to be stopped and that “every option must be pursued to further protect victims of Wagner elsewhere in the world”.

Legal action “on behalf of courageous Ukrainian victims has just this second been commenced” against Wagner group and Prigozhin, he said.

“The claim has been commenced with formal service of a Letter Before Action on Prigozhin and Wagner. This is the first time in the world that Wagner and their likes have been sued by its victims for terrorism, used as a weapon of war, Putin’s illegal war,” he told members of parliament.

McCue said evidence would be produced before the High Court in London aimed at establishing that “Wagner engaged in terrorism against the Ukrainian people” and that “Putin’s war machine engaged in an unlawful conspiracy to deploy terrorism to facilitate their illegal invasion of Ukraine”.

The case was being brought by a group of Ukrainian victims in the UK but also “symbolically represents” all Ukrainians who have “suffered loss as a result of the war”, he added.

– Close Putin ally –

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch turned critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin told the hearing Prigozhin’s influence was on a par with that of other senior ministers in the Kremlin due to his personal relationship with the leader.

“The influence of Mr Prigozhin is approximately equal to the influence of Mr (Sergei Shoigu), minister of defence, or Mr (Sergei) Lavrov, foreign minister,” he said.

Prigozhin, he said, was close enough to Putin that he was even allowed to sign pardons on behalf of the president in order to allow him to recruit criminals from prisons “irrespective of the gravity of the crimes”.

“This is a very high level of influence,” he said.

The exiled tycoon said he believed the Wagner group would in the future be used “in Europe”.

And he criticised Western governments for being too slow to recognise the danger it posed.

In Africa, he said, Wagner had been engaged in the “preparing and training” of combat groups.

“This should have raised great concern and a great response at that time,” he said, adding that there had been a “great under-estimation of the enemy”.

South Africa, one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters, will require at least half-a-trillion dollars to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, the World Bank said Tuesday.

“Financing requirements associated with the transitions could amount to 4.4 percent of GDP per year — or 8.5 trillion rand (about $500 billion)” between this year and 2050, said the bank in a report published Tuesday.

In light of the government’s limited fiscal capacity, the domestic private sector and external financing will be required for the transition, it said.

Last year, South Africa, the continent’s most industrialised economy, secured $8.5 billion in loans and grants from a group of rich nations to finance the transition to cleaner energy sources.

The bank said South Africa accounts for 1.2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — with the coal-dominated energy sector responsible for nearly half of its discharges.

“The power sector… will need to transform radically by moving away from coal toward renewables,” it said, projecting that solar and wind will provide about 85 percent of the country’s energy by 2050.

The country “is one of the most carbon- and energy intensive economies in the world”, the bank added, noting that South Africa’s carbon intensity was 3.2 times higher than the global average in 2019.

“This shift should start immediately to address the ailing generation capacity, accompanied by (an) enhanced regional energy market,” said the bank.

A shift away from coal for renewable sources of energy will help the country tackle its ongoing energy crisis “most urgently and cost-competitively”.

But transitioning from coal will come at a heavy cost.

The bank estimates that at least 300,000 jobs in high-emitting sectors will be lost, urging the government to find ways to alleviate the potential negative effects of the transition.

For every job lost, the bank estimated that between two and three jobs could be created in renewables, green manufacturing and non-coal mining sectors.

Russia on Tuesday dispatched one of six giant magnets needed for the ITER nuclear fusion programme in France, one of the last international scientific projects Moscow participates in despite the Ukraine conflict. 

The ship carrying the Russian-made magnet — or “poloidal field coil” — departed Saint Petersburg on Tuesday under grey skies.

On board, the massive nine-metre-wide coil, which weighs 200 tonnes had been tightly wrapped to withstand a two-week trip to Marseille, southern France. 

The ring-shaped magnet built under Russian atomic agency Rosatom’s supervision will make up the top part of the world’s largest “tokamak”.

The tokamak is a magnetic fusion device built in France following the same principle that powers our sun and stars.

The Russian piece was meant to leave in May but sanctions forbidding Russian ships docking in Europe delayed the departure. 

Still, the “current situation did not change the fact that we will fullfil our obligations”, Rosatom representative for international projects Viacheslav Perchukov said.

Geopolitical tensions “practically did not affect the realisation of this project”, Perchukov said.  

“Without (the Russian coil), the tokamak will not work,” senior ITER centre scientist Leonid Khimchenko told AFP.

He hailed a “unique” achievement, over eight years in the making. 

In southern France, 35 nations are collaborating to build the largest nuclear fusion device in the world. 

“This is such an interesting project that in fact we are all one family… there is no competition between us, nothing,” Khimchenko said.

The project was set in motion after a 1985 summit between US President Ronald Reagan and Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Andrey Mednikov, a scientist in charge of the production of the poloidal field coil, praised the continuing international cooperation. 

“If this cooperation was brought to a halt,” Mednikov said, “everyone would lose: both Russia and the international community.”