February 11 2025

1. Trump Orders Pause on Foreign Bribery Law Enforcement, Citing Business Competitiveness
2. Musk Makes $97.4bn Bid for OpenAI
3. DOJ Orders Dismissal of NYC Mayor Adams' Bribery Case
4. China Builds ‘Planetary Defence’ Team As Concerns Grow Over Asteroid Risk
5. Trump Issues Ultimatum to Hamas as Ceasefire Teeters
February 11, 2020: World Health Organization officially names novel coronavirus disease COVID‑19

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1. Trump Orders Pause on Foreign Bribery Law Enforcement, Citing Business Competitiveness

Donald Trump has ordered the Department of Justice to halt the enforcement of a US anti-corruption law that bars Americans from bribing foreign government officials to win business. “It’s going to mean a lot more business for America,” the president said in the Oval Office after signing an executive order on Monday directing Pam Bondi, the US attorney-general, to pause enforcement of the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. “It sounds good on paper, but in [practice] it’s a disaster,” Trump said of the FCPA. “It means that if an American goes over to a foreign country and starts doing business over there legally, legitimately or otherwise, it’s almost a guaranteed investigation, indictment and nobody wants to do business with the Americans because of it.” A White House official said that the country’s “national security depends on America and its companies gaining strategic commercial advantages around the world”. The official added: “President Trump is stopping excessive, unpredictable FCPA enforcement that makes American companies less competitive.” The order marks one of the boldest enforcement policies issued by the Trump administration, potentially undermining a critical tool in cracking down on individual as well as corporate misconduct. The decision drew criticism from anti-corruption experts who said that stopping enforcement of the law would hurt US companies operating abroad. “Most [US] companies appreciate the fact that the FCPA allows them to be firm in refusing bribes because most private sector companies — sensibly — see bribery as an unproductive cost,” Richard Nephew, a former anti-corruption co-ordinator at the State Department, posted on X.

Article Source: FT

2. Musk Makes $97.4bn Bid for OpenAI

Elon Musk and a group of co-investors have submitted a near-$100bn bid for the non-profit that controls OpenAI, complicating chief executive Sam Altman’s attempt to convert the start-up to a for-profit entity. Musk, whose start-up xAI is a direct competitor to OpenAI, submitted the bid to the group on Monday, according to Musk’s attorney Marc Toberoff. Altman is in the process of converting OpenAI into a for-profit, moving the company away from its roots as a research organisation by spinning off its non-profit. One of the main barriers to the change has been establishing a fair value for the non-profit which, under the current structure, controls the company. Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI who invested tens of millions of dollars into the fledgling company before leaving its board in 2018, has said that the conversion to a for-profit betrayed the start-up’s founding mission. He has already launched a lawsuit against Altman and OpenAI attempting to block the conversion and is now bidding $97.4bn for the assets held by the non-profit, which include a controlling stake in OpenAI’s for-profit subsidiary. Shortly after the Wall Street Journal first reported the unsolicited approach, Altman said on social media site X, “no thank you, but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want”. Musk bought Twitter in 2022 for $44bn and renamed it X. One person close to OpenAI said Musk’s bid was “purely a publicity stunt” and not a viable deal for the company. “If [OpenAI] say ‘it’s a publicity stunt’, we say ‘call our bluff’,” said one person involved in Musk’s bid, which is backed by xAI and partners including Valor Equity Partners, Baron Capital, Atreides Management, Vy Capital, 8VC, and Endeavour chief executive Ari Emanuel.

Article Source: FT

3. DOJ Orders Dismissal of NYC Mayor Adams' Bribery Case

The Justice Department ordered Manhattan federal prosecutors to drop their bribery case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Monday, in a stunning decision that is poised to end a high-profile prosecution that began under former President Joe Biden’s administration. Federal prosecutors charged Adams in September with taking illegal campaign contributions from Turkey and accepting $100,000 in travel and hotel perks in exchange for official acts. Adams, the first sitting mayor to be indicted in New York City’s modern history, had been scheduled to go to trial in April on five criminal counts, including bribery, fraud and soliciting contributions from foreign nationals.  The Justice Department, under new leadership appointed by President Trump, issued the order after holding discussions with Adams’s legal team and the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office. The department said in a memo to prosecutors that the indictment had interfered with the mayor’s ability to participate in Trump’s immigration enforcement.

Article Source: WSJ

4. China Builds ‘Planetary Defence’ Team As Concerns Grow Over Asteroid Risk

China has started assembling a planetary defence team to counter the threat of near-Earth asteroids following the discovery of a large asteroid that could strike our planet in seven years. On Friday, the European Space Agency (ESA) updated their probability of asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting Earth in 2032 to 2.2 per cent, putting it at the top of the agency’s risk list. The asteroid, estimated to be 40 to 90 metres (130 to 300 feet) wide, was discovered by the University of Hawaii’s Institute of Astronomy in late December. The discovery activated global asteroid response mechanisms after its odds of an impact with Earth surpassed an international monitoring threshold.

Article Source: South China Morning Post

5. Trump Issues Ultimatum to Hamas as Ceasefire Teeters

A. President Trump warned Hamas to free all the hostages held in Gaza by Saturday, hours after the Palestinian militant group said it would postpone this week’s scheduled release amid a dispute over goods needed to provide shelter for the enclave’s displaced population. “As far as I’m concerned, if all of the hostages aren’t returned by Saturday at 12 o’clock—I think it’s an appropriate time—I would say, cancel it and all bets are off and let hell break out,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. The president also signaled impatience with the staged releases under the cease-fire deal his envoy helped negotiate, which calls for three hostages to be exchanged for dozens of Palestinian prisoners every Saturday. Trump said his Saturday deadline was for the release of all the hostages—“all of them, not in dribs and drabs, not two and one and three and four and two.” Hamas said earlier it would indefinitely postpone this Saturday’s hostage release following long-running complaints that Israel is holding up access to tents and mobile homes needed for shelter, the most serious challenge yet to a fragile cease-fire under which another 17 Israeli hostages or their bodies are to be returned to Israel over the coming weeks. Two living American hostages remain in Gaza. One is a male civilian, and the other is an Israeli soldier. The bodies of four dead American hostages also remain in Gaza.  

B. Bound. Starved. Wounded. Tortured. These are the conditions that some hostages being held in Gaza still face, according to information their families said they had received from Israeli military and security officials after Hamas released three captives on Saturday as part of a cease-fire agreement. The emaciated appearance of three hostages released in a ceremony in Gaza staged by Hamas last weekend — Eli Sharabi, 52; Or Levy, 34; and Ohad Ben-Ami, 56 — and the details of their captivity have relatives of the remaining captives sounding the alarm about the urgent need for the continuation of the phased cease-fire deal. Before they were handed over to Red Cross officials in exchange for 183 Palestinian prisoners on Saturday, the frail, painfully thin hostages were paraded onstage before a crowd in the city of Deir al-Balah, Gaza, each holding a Hamas-issued “release certificate,” and made to recite words written for them — including thanks to the militants who had held them for 16 months.  

C. Israel and Hamas agreed in January to pause fighting for 42 days, during which 33 Israeli hostages would be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Under the deal, an additional 17 people—including some known to be dead—are due to be exchanged over the next few weeks. The two sides were supposed to have begun talks about a second-phase agreement that would lead to the release of all remaining hostages and an end to hostilities in Gaza. Those negotiations were to have started 16 days after the first-phase pact was sealed. Twenty-four days have now passed.

Article Source: WSJ, NYT

February 11, 2020: World Health Organization officially names novel coronavirus disease COVID‑19

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Sources

1. https://www.ft.com/content/f880bfc3-6069-427b-9873-51255d4e0b8c

2. https://www.ft.com/content/3a673ed2-26d5-47af-9028-8af7d742c2e7

3. https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/justice-department-orders-prosecutors-to-drop-eric-adams-bribery-case-f5ee1ac7?mod=hp_lead_pos9

4. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3298116/china-builds-planetary-defence-team-concerns-grow-over-2024-yr4-asteroid?share=INc%2FjEgKOTidOz9ur9DNnOJnaegRnNbooNB53vgt6YiH2AuZv%2FXWeSTyj2%2BOgLF7aLO0%2BbUMgjUvHBmhd0PiyfLfpqRxPo9nB4VOs3XTB1E%3D&utm_campaign=social_share

5. A https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-says-it-will-postpone-hostage-releases-over-disputes-with-israel-ab701e59
B https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/world/middleeast/israel-hostages-abuse-hamas.html
C https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hostage-accounts-raise-alarm-about-how-long-those-left-in-gaza-can-survive-6edbc924?mod=hp_lead_pos3