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Federal agencies and government officials are quietly sidestepping U.S. ​President Donald Trump’s ban on working with ‌Anthropic, Politico reports. The Commerce Department's Center for AI Standards and Innovation is actively testing Anthropic's frontier ​AI model Mythos’ hacking prowess, the ​report says. Earlier this year, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s technology after the company's CEO, Dario Amodei, took a firm stance against allowing the Pentagon to deploy its models in autonomous lethal attacks or mass surveillance operations.

 

Politico

The $3.5trn private credit market does not present a systemic risk to the wider financial ​system, bond giant PIMCO's group chief investment officer Daniel Ivascyn ‌has said. "We do not see ​systemic risks within private credit, we see disappointment, we see ⁠lower returns than anticipated," Ivascyn told a PIMCO media conference ​in London. Reuters notes that alternative asset managers' stocks this year have been badly hit by risks linked to AI, fund outflows and fears of credit stress.

 

Reuters

Senior U.S. defense officials have held talks about producing weapons and other military supplies with top executives ​of companies including General Motors, GE Aerospace and Ford Motor. The preliminary and wide-ranging talks, which commenced before the war with Iran, come as the White House wants automakers and other American manufacturers to play a ​larger role in weapons production, the ‌Wall Street Journal reports. The Pentagon is interested in enlisting the companies to use their personnel and factory capacity to boost production of munitions and other equipment as the wars in Ukraine and Iran deplete stocks. The Defense Department “is committed to rapidly expanding the defense industrial base by leveraging all available commercial solutions and technologies to ensure our warfighters maintain a decisive advantage,” a Pentagon official said.

 

Wall Street Journal

Global advertising agencies Publicis, WPP and Dentsu have settled a probe by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) which alleged they colluded to boycott online media platforms based on political content they didn't like, including Elon Musk’s X. The settlements with the FTC and eight Republican-led ‌U.S. ⁠states require Dentsu, Publicis and WPP's GroupM to stop alleged efforts to set common "brand safety" standards, or use "exclusion lists" when placing ads. “This unlawful collusion not only damaged our marketplace, but also distorted the marketplace of ideas by discriminating ​against speech and ideas that fell below the unlawfully agreed-upon floor," FTC ​Chairman Andrew Ferguson said.

 

AdWeek

Financial Times

Reuters

An antitrust lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court accuses Google of shutting out rival Android app stores by monopolizing app distribution ​and billing, in violation of U.S. antitrust law. Aptoide, a Portuguese company that bills itself as "the alternative Android app store," ​and has about 436,000 apps in its catalog and more than 200m ​annual users by 2024, said it would have exerted substantially more pressure on Google's pricing and policies ​but for the tech giant's "anticompetitive chokehold" that shuts out smaller rivals.

 

Reuters

New York federal prosecutors have charged Stefan Pildes, the organiser of SantaCon, a New York City bar crawl promoted as a charitable event, with wire fraud. Pildes used his position as the president of the nonprofit that runs SantaCon to illegally divert the money into a separate company to finance “personal ventures,” and spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” on “extensive renovations to a lakefront property in New Jersey, luxury vacations in Hawaii, Las Vegas, and Vail, extravagant meals and a luxury vehicle,” according to an indictment. If convicted, Pildes faces up to 20 years in prison.

 

ABC 7 New York

Financial Times

New York Times

Reuters reports that Luiz Felipe Brandao de Mello, Brazil's top labor inspector, has been fired for adding Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD to a so-called 'dirty list' ‌of employers accused of subjecting workers to conditions described by the government as similar to slavery. Mello disobeyed an order from Labor Minister Luiz Marinho to leave the automaker off Brazil's ​labor abuse registry, said sources. "The ​dismissal of the secretary signals an escalation of political interference in labor inspections," Brazil's national association of labor inspectors, Anafitra, said in a statement. Brazil's Labor Ministry said the dismissal was "an administrative act."

 

Reuters

JPMorgan Chase Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Barnum has said he backs a Trump administration proposal to end mandatory quarterly reporting. "We're very supportive of all initiatives and any initiatives that lessen the burden to ensure that U.S.-listed markets remain maximally robust," Barnum said on a post-earnings call. The Wall Street Journal in March reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission is preparing a proposal to ​ditch the requirement and give companies the option to share results twice ⁠a year.

 

Reuters

The European Union is being urged to urgently consider changes to the bloc’s upcoming regulations on methane emissions by a coalition of energy companies, chemical makers and trade associations that includes Exxon Mobil, BP and Trafigura Group as well as fertilizer makers, oil refiners, organized labor, and synthetic-fabric manufacturers. A letter to the energy ministers of the EU’s 27 member nations dated April 13 calls on them to consider a “stop-the-clock” mechanism to allow companies to adjust to new rules, among other proposals.

 

Bloomberg

At the recent HumanX conference in San Francisco, 6,500 investors, entrepreneurs and tech executives gathered to address the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on jobs. An advertisement at the entrance to the event set the tone for the four days: "Stop hiring humans." Florian Douetteau, the chief executive of Dataiku, a French company specializing in enterprise AI, told AFP that the real human added value is "capacity for judgment." He detailed a scenario whereby an AI agent works through the night and its human counterpart reviews the results in the morning. Nevertheless, he worries that "We are going to have a generation of people who will never have written anything from start to finish in their entire lives . . . That's pretty unsettling."

 

Japan Times

Straits Times

Sazerac has offered about $15bn, or $32 a share, to buy Brown-Forman, complicating Pernod Ricard’s separate effort to combine with the Jack Daniel’s maker. The bid comes as alcohol companies face weaker demand, tariff uncertainty, and supply-chain strain, making scale and cost savings more attractive. Brown-Forman shares closed well below the offer, reflecting investor caution about obstacles including the Brown family’s control. The Wall Street Journal says Pernod may still have strategic advantages through a possible share swap and broader global reach.

 

Wall Street Journal

Norway’s finance minister Jens Stoltenberg says the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund does not intend to shed U.S. assets, despite concerns over the Middle East war and America’s mounting debt.

 

Financial Times