Enlarge / Brad Smith, vice chairman and president of Microsoft, is sworn in before testifying about Microsoft's cybersecurity work during a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on June 13, 2024. (credit: SAUL LOEB / Contributor | AFP )

Microsoft is pivoting its company culture to make security a top priority, President Brad Smith testified to Congress on Thursday, promising that security will be "more important even than the company’s work on artificial intelligence."

Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO, "has taken on the responsibility personally to serve as the senior executive with overall accountability for Microsoft’s security," Smith told Congress.

His testimony comes after Microsoft admitted that it could have taken steps to prevent two aggressive nation-state cyberattacks from China and Russia .

Read 30 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The owner of Vauxhall, Jeep and Fiat says it opposes EU measures against Chinese EVs and wants to compete ‘as a global company’

The owner of the Jeep, Fiat and Vauxhall brands has said it will not take a “defensive” stance in the battle for electric car sales, amid signs of an escalating trade war in the market between Europe and China.

Stellantis’s chief executive, Carlos Tavares, has criticised the EU tariffs on imported Chinese cars announced on Wednesday and said the world’s fourth biggest carmaker preferred to “fight to stay competitive”.

A new book looks at how the pandemic highlighted issues with the supply chain and how precarious things still are

We seem to live in a time of magic, when a slight movement of our fingers can get us anything we ever wanted on our doorstep. A toaster? Yours tomorrow. Cat food? It will be here by Thursday. The process from click to door is so easy, it doesn’t require a second thought.

In his book, How the World Ran Out of Everything, New York Times journalist Peter Goodman is out to change that. With the amount of exploitation in the supply chain, the ease of such transactions is not magic – it’s more magical thinking.

They look like simple fishing boats but are capable of swarming in huge numbers to help Beijing stake its territorial claims in the South China Sea

Chinese fishing boats started swarming the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea in mid May. Some had already been drifting around the picturesque reef in the Philippines exclusive economic zone for some time.

However, the Chinese boats were not regular fishing vessels, and they weren’t there to fish. They were there to counter a Philippine aid flotilla aiming to deliver supplies to fishers near the disputed shoal. In the end, the aid flotilla turned back before it reached the shoal.

The tariffs are aimed at countering the alleged state support handed to China’s car manufacturing industry

• EU to put tariffs of up to 38% on Chinese EVs as trade war looms

The EU has told Beijing that it plans to impose new tariffs on imports of Chinese electric vehicles into the trading bloc, potentially triggering a trade war.

So what are the details, how will it affect the industry and will the price of cars on the dealership forecourt be affected?

Move would trigger duties of more than €2bn a year and probably prompt a trade war

• Business live – latest updates

The EU is expected to notify Beijing on Wednesday it intends to impose tariffs of up to 25% on imports of Chinese electric vehicles, triggering duties of more than €2bn (£1.7bn) a year and probably prompting a trade war with China.

The tariffs would be applied provisionally from next month in line with World Trade Organisation rules which would give China four weeks to challenge any evidence the EU provides justify the levies on imported EVs.

The industry that has traditionally powered about a quarter of GDP has been in a downward spiral that policymakers have struggled to halt

All across China, from Beijing in the north, to Shenzhen in the south, millions of newly built homes stand empty and unwanted. There were nearly 391m sq metres of unsold residential property in China as of April, according to the National Bureau of Statistics . That is the equivalent of Manchester and Birmingham combined – and then some – sitting as vacant, unwanted property.

This glut of idle property has caused a headache for the government, shaken the world’s second largest economy and raised tensions over the purpose of housebuilding in a nation where property investment had been viewed as a safe bet.

The conviction of peaceful pro-democracy activists is another shameful moment in the ongoing crackdown

Seven years ago, Lord Neuberger, a judge of the Hong Kong court of final appeal – and formerly president of the UK’s supreme court – described the Chinese region’s foreign judges as “ canaries in the mine ”. Their willingness to serve was a sign that judicial independence remained healthy, “but if they start to leave in droves, that would represent a serious alarm call”.

That was before the extraordinary uprising in 2019 to defend Hong Kong’s autonomy, and the crackdown that followed. The draconian national security law of 2020 prompted the resignation of an Australian judge, and two British judges quit in 2022. Last week, two more birds flew: Lord Sumption and Lord Collins of Mapesbury. Lord Sumption (with other judges) had said that continued participation was in the interests of the people of Hong Kong. Now he says that those hopes of sustaining the rule of law are “no longer realistic” and that “a [once] vibrant and politically diverse community is slowly becoming a totalitarian state”. He cited illiberal legislation, Beijing’s ability to reverse decisions by Hong Kong courts and an oppressive political environment where judges are urged to demonstrate “patriotism”.

Figures suggest China-founded firm is among world’s most profitable fashion companies as it prepares for stock market listing

Shein, the online fast fashion retailer founded in China, has more than doubled its profits to more than $2bn (£1.6bn) as it awaits approval for a stock market listing in New York or London.

The company, which is growing rapidly around the world by using social media to promote its goods, recorded sales of about $45bn last year, according to a report in the Financial Times based on information from sources close to the company.