Happy Thursday and welcome to your morning wrap of the key political and business headlines from around the world.
First up, deceased sex-offending financier Jeffrey Epstein wrote in a 2019 email to a journalist that Donald Trump “knew about the girls”, according to emails released overnight, the Associated Press reported.
However, the White House has quickly accused Democrats of selectively releasing the emails to smear the president’s name.
Around 20,000 pages of documents and emails were made public by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee and also included one that Epstein wrote in 2011, in which he said Trump had “spent hours” at Epstein’s house with a victim of sex trafficking.
The disclosures seemed designed to raise questions about Trump’s friendship with Epstein and any knowledge he may have had, although the president has consistently denied any knowledge of Epstein’s alleged crimes.
The version of the 2011 email released by Democrats redacted the name of the victim that Trump was said to have spent hours with, but Republicans on the committee later said it was Virginia Giuffre, who has long insisted that Trump was not among the men who had victimised her.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt accused the Democrats of having “selectively leaked emails” to “create a fake narrative to smear President Trump”.
US President Donald Trump.
In other news, Sir Keir Starmer has insisted he runs a “united team” after a senior minister was forced to repeatedly deny that he planned to oust the UK prime minister, the ABC reported.
Rumours are swirling in the UK Parliament that some ministers, including Starmer’s Health Secretary Wes Streeting, are plotting a challenge following the autumn Budget later this month, in which Labour is expected to break an election pledge by raising income tax.
Several media reports quoting anonymous Downing Street sources appeared overnight, berating the supposed plotters and vowing the prime minister would fight any challenge.
Starmer said he never authorised attacks on Cabinet members and his was a “united team”. Meanwhile, Streeting went on BBC Radio and Sky News to say he supported the prime minister.
UK 10-year bond yields edged higher overnight amid the news, while the British pound fell 0.27% against the US dollar.
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
To South America, where Venezuela is mobilising its military in response to a build-up of US warships and troops in the Caribbean Sea, CNN reported.
Land, air, naval and reserve forces will carry out exercises today, according to Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino López, who said the deployment was a response to the “imperialist threat” posed by the US.
The US has framed its build-up of forces in the region as aimed at combating drug trafficking into the US, and has carried out strikes on numerous alleged drug boats in recent weeks.
However, Venezuela believes the US is trying to force a regime change and remove its socialist president, Nicolás Maduro.
In business news, AI startup Anthropic said it would invest US$50 billion ($88b) in building data centres in the US, in the latest billion-dollar example of companies racing to expand their artificial intelligence infrastructure, Reuters reported.
Anthropic, which is backed by Google and Amazon, is behind the Claude AI models and said it would set up facilities with infrastructure provider Fluidstack in Texas and New York, with more sites coming online in the future.
Anthropic is the latest tech company to announce massive spending plans focused on the US, as President Trump pushes for more investment on American soil to maintain the country’s edge in AI.
Data centre.
Staying with AI, chip maker Advanced Micro Devices’ shares have jumped 10% on strong growth projections and after its chief executive, Lisa Su, shut down concerns over Big Tech’s elevated spending during an interview, CNBC reported.
“I don’t think it’s a big gamble,” she said in an interview with CNBC. “I think it’s the right gamble.” Her comments came as tech’s megacap companies announced more than US$380b in AI spending in their latest earnings reports, as firms race to build out infrastructure to support soaring demand.
Su told analysts earlier this week that AMD expected revenue to grow 35% per year over the next three to five years due to “insatiable” demand for AI chips.
But the flurry of big spending announcements and talk of rampant demand has fuelled concerns of a looming AI bubble, which has jolted markets in recent sessions, and prompted short sellers such as Michael Burry to take bets against some of the largest players in the sector.
