Peacock, the streaming service of Comcast’s entertainment unit NBCUniversal, narrowed its third-quarter loss to $217 million compared with $436 million in the year-ago period. The streamer, which unveiled new programming like The Paper and…
Researchers at Trinity College Dublin have found that applying electrical currents to “macrophages,” a crucial type of immune cell, can reprogram them to reduce inflammation and promote faster healing in cases of disease or injury.
LONDON — Universal Music Group and AI song generation platform Udio have settled a copyright infringement lawsuit and agreed to team up on new music creation and streaming platform, the two companies said in a joint statement.
Dance as a performative art form alleviates perceived symptoms of depression, helps to understand its root causes and promotes self-actualization, a recent study from the University of Eastern Finland found. The multidisciplinary…
FRANKFURT, Germany — Europe’s economy grew by a modest 0.2% in the third quarter, official figures showed Thursday. Growth in the 20 countries that use the euro was held by back higher U.S. tariffs and anemic performances by Germany and Italy, both of which barely avoided a technical recession.
The weak growth outcome won’t be enough, however, to spur the European Central Bank to cut interest rates. The ECB’s stand-pat stance is a sharp contrast with that of the U.S. Federal Reserve, which cut its benchmark rate by a quarter percentage point Wednesday and is wrestling with whether to cut again before the end of the year.
Germany’s economy stagnated, with zero growth in the August-September third quarter, following a contraction of 0.2% in the second quarter, figures from EU statistics agency Eurostat showed. Two straight quarters of falling output is one frequently used definition of recession. Italy likewise turned in zero growth after contracting by 0.1% in the second quarter.
Germany’s manufacturing- and export-focused economy has been held back by multiple factors including higher energy prices, competition from Chinese producers of autos and industrial machinery, a lack of skilled workers and excessive bureaucracy.
Another headwind for Europe comes from President Donald Trump’s imposition of a 15% tariff, or import tax, on goods brought to the U.S. from Europe, as well as from the uncertainty spread by back-and-forth talks with the European Union’s executive Commission. over possible higher tariff rates.
The ECB left its key interest rates unchanged at its previous two meetings in July and September. The bank has cut its benchmark rate to 2% after raising it to 4% to snuff out a burst of double-digit inflation caused by the pandemic rebound and an energy crisis due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
ECB head Christine Lagarde said both times that monetary policy was “in a good place.” Annual inflation of 2.2% in September is within range of the bank’s goal of 2%, and keeping inflation under control is the ECB’s chief job. Lower interest rates stimulate growth while higher ones combat inflation but can hold back business activity through higher borrowing costs.
The ECB meeting “will be as close to a non-event as one could possibly imagine,” said Matthew Ryan, head of market strategy at payments platform Ebury.
Purchasing managers surveys pointing to a modest improvement in economic activity at the start of the fourth quarter have strengthened the case for no further cuts, analysts say. Analysts at Deutsche Bank said 2% was likely the end of the ECB’s cuts and foresaw the next rate moves as moderate increases only late next year as German infrastructure and defense spending start to boost growth and inflation.
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
You only get one shot at AI supremacy. Or that’s the thinking that seems to have taken hold among Big Tech executives. Their artificial intelligence strategy has a “you only live once” feel: shovel in as much money as possible, hope to come out on top, and if you fail, at least you tried.
Meta Platforms more so than most. Founder Mark Zuckerberg told analysts on Wednesday that he is spending to meet “the most optimistic cases”. That means the Facebook parent investing “notably” more than $100bn next year, twice what analysts were pencilling in for 2026 this time a year ago, according to LSEG.
The resulting $160bn drop in Meta’s market value reflects that, for investors, this logic is doubtful. There is no reason to think investing a lot ensures success — witness Zuckerberg’s languishing Metaverse project — so higher sums just up the chances of big writedowns. Google is spending even more than Meta on data centres but has a cloud computing business, so it can rent what it doesn’t use to third parties.
For one Meta shareholder at least, the risk-reward calculation works a bit differently: Zuckerberg himself. The prize — being the first to achieve so-called superintelligence — isn’t just a financial bet. It would propel him into the history books.
And the downside is limited. There is no chance of Meta going bust. Zuckerberg’s spree has so far been funded with operating cash flows, not debt. While Meta is juicing up its data centre investments with leverage, it is able to do so in joint ventures like the one it has set up with private credit operator Blue Owl that don’t sit on its balance sheet.
Meanwhile, the company makes so much cash that it can afford to risk some of its investments going nowhere. Even if Meta were to spend $500bn on superintelligence in the next five years, it would still have $400bn of cumulative free cash left over, according to Visible Alpha.
Even if Meta were not to cross the finish line first, the capex might not be entirely wasted. Spending on AI is increasingly driving more revenue in its “core” business of selling ads on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. In the latest quarter, it showed users 14 per cent more ads than a year earlier, and charged 10 per cent more for each one.
If the AI race really turns into a damp squib for Meta, the worst it faces is a badly bruised share price. And even that might sting less than one might expect. It is not clear investors were pricing in AI supremacy anyway. Meta shares trade at the same 25 times forward earnings that they have done on average for the past decade.
Failure would be unpleasant. But — for tech bosses who are wealthy, messianic and entrenched — the risk is far outweighed by the potential glory. It will take more than a mini market backlash to kill the AI YOLO trade.
Aging manifests itself through a broad diversity of conserved cellular phenotypes, but in most cases, we know little about how these are causally linked to each other (Denoth Lippuner et al., 2014; López-Otín et al., 2023; Janssens and…
Living systems are a bit like the traffic in a city: when the roads are repaired on a regular basis, the traffic flows. But if the roads are not maintained, wear and tear accumulates, disruptions spread, and traffic begins to grind to a…
— A review of 155 scientific studies found influenza and COVID infections raised the risk of heart attack or stroke as much as three-to five-fold in the weeks following the initial infection.
Jobs at WPP could be at risk as its new chief executive launched a review designed to revive the advertising group’s fortunes after a fresh profit warning.
Cindy Rose announced the review on Thursday, saying she was taking action to address “unacceptable” performance at the company, which has struggled to stem a growing exodus of clients and compete with the AI and data capabilities of its rivals.
The former Microsoft executive said WPP – which lost its top spot as the world’s largest advertising agency by revenue to Publicis last year – would soon become a “much simpler” business that would be “pushing harder” into technology to get growth.
The comments raised the prospect of potential job losses across its 100,000-strong global workforce.
The company warned that its headline operating profit margin would now be lower than expected, sending shares down a further 11% on Thursday morning to 318p. Shares in WPP – which had already warned on annual profits in July – have already lost more than half their value since the start of 2025.
“I acknowledge that our recent performance is unacceptable and we are taking action to address this,” said Rose, who took over the top role in September after six years on WPP’s board.
“To deliver performance improvements, we will position our offering to be much simpler, more integrated, powered by data and AI, efficiently priced and designed to deliver growth and business outcomes for our clients,” Rose said, adding that she would be “dramatically simplifying how we organise ourselves internally, as well as building a high-performance team culture”.
Rose said the company would be “pushing harder” on using tech, and focus on “cost efficiency”. WPP will set out further details of the plans early next year.
WPP now expects “revenue less pass-through costs” – a figure that accounts for fees paid to external suppliers – to fall by between 5.5% and 6% in 2025, marking a downgrade on its previous forecasts for a drop of 3% to 5%. It also estimated that the headline operating profit margin would come in at about 13%, just below the bottom of its previous range.
skip past newsletter promotion
after newsletter promotion
Rose was appointed as the chief executive in September, in order to implement a sweeping restructure to turn around the ailing London-listed company. She replaced Mark Read, a WPP veteran who worked with the company for 30 years.
“There is a lot to do, and it will take time to see the impact, but in my first 60 days we are already moving at pace with some initiatives already announced and more to come,” Rose said.
“We know what it takes to win: we are optimistic, energised and confident that we’re building the right plan and the right culture to secure a bright future for WPP, our people, our clients, and our shareholders.”
