The following are some of the news items mentioned in the last few days:

  • European Commission has proposed a 500M Euro package to be spent over the next two years to make Europe a magnet for researchers
  • Trump threatens to impose 100% tariffs on movies made outside US
  • OpenAI won’t fully convert into a traditional for-profit company. After pushback from Elon Musk and others, OpenAI has abandoned its plan to restructure itself as a pure for-profit business. It will instead become a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC). This is a type of company that allows for-profit activity while prioritizing a public mission — in this case, ensuring that AI benefits humanity. This allows investors to receive returns, but the company still has a legal obligation to consider its broader mission, not just profit.
  • EU is setting a 2027 deadline to end all energy contracts with Russia
  • In the first round of Romania’s presidential election, the general public—Romanian citizens—cast their votes, not political parties. Romania employs a two-round system for presidential elections: if no candidate secures more than 50% of the vote in the first round, a runoff is held between the top two candidates. In this recent election, George Simion received approximately 41% of the vote, while Nicu?or Dan garnered around 21%, leading to a scheduled runoff on May 18, 2025
  • Opec+ decides to increase the oil supply to 411000 barrels a day With the current price of $60 per barrel, the OPEC+ increase of 411,000 barrels per day translates to: Daily Revenue: 411,000 barrels/day × $60/barrel = $24.66 million/day Annual Revenue: $24.66 million/day × 365 days = $9.00 billion/year
  • Top banks is EU have churned out a revenue of 13B Euros in the first quarter of 2025
  • 3G Capital has acquired Sketchers for 9.4B USD in cash
  • Huawei is building all components of AI supply chain domestically
  • Cursor valued at 9B USD
  • Taiwan dollar jumps by 6.5 percent in two days on trade deal fear