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World leaders to present joint approach to AI at India summit close
Dozens of world leaders and ministers are expected to deliver on Friday a shared view of how to handle artificial intelligence, wrapping up a five-day summit focused on the technology. It comes a day after OpenAI chief Sam Altman told the meeting in New Delhi that the fast-evolving sector needs regulation "urgently". Frenzied demand for generative AI has turbocharged profits for companies, while also fuelling fears about the impact on society and the planet. Altman, CEO of the company behind ChatGPT, has called for oversight in the past but said last year that taking too tight an approach could hold the United States back in the AI race. "Centralisation of this technology, in one company or country, could lead to ruin," the 40-year-old said on Thursday. "This is not to suggest that we won't need any regulation or safeguards. We obviously do, urgently, like we have for other powerful technologies." France 24, February 20

Amazon service was taken down by AI coding bot
Amazon’s cloud unit has suffered at least two outages due to errors involving its own AI tools, leading some employees to raise doubts about the US tech giant’s push to roll out these coding assistants. Amazon Web Services experienced a 13-hour interruption to one system used by its customers in mid-December after engineers allowed its Kiro AI coding tool to make certain changes, according to four people familiar with the matter. The people said the agentic tool, which can take autonomous actions on behalf of users, determined that the best course of action was to “delete and recreate the environment”. Amazon posted an internal postmortem about the “outage” of the AWS system, which lets customers explore the costs of its services. Multiple Amazon employees told the FT that this was the second occasion in recent months in which one of the group’s AI tools had been at the centre of a service disruption. “We’ve already seen at least two production outages [in the past few months],” said one senior AWS employee. “The engineers let the AI [agent] resolve an issue without intervention. The outages were small but entirely foreseeable.” Financial Times, February 20

Investors pour record sums into European stocks
Global investors are pouring record sums into European equities, as a desire to reduce exposure to the US meets growing optimism over the state of the region’s economy. European stocks are headed for their highest ever monthly inflows in February, following two consecutive record weekly flows of about $10bn, according to data from EPFR, which tracks ETF and mutual fund flows. The continent’s blue-chip Stoxx Europe 600 index has punched through a series of record highs this month, as have indices in the UK, France and Spain. European bourses have benefited from big investors’ desire to diversify away from Wall Street and its massive technology sector, which has been buffeted this year by concerns over a potential AI bubble. “It’s a lot of global investors wanting to diversify away from an expensive US market,” said Sharon Bell, senior equities strategist at Goldman Sachs, adding this was particularly the case for US-based investors looking overseas. “Europe as an equity market offers a different exposure … there’s less tech.” Financial Times, February 20

UK reports record-breaking budget surplus of £30.4bn in surprise boost for chancellor
The UK government has posted the biggest ever budget surplus, official figures show, after a large increase in self-assessment and capital gains tax receipts. In a boost for the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, in the run-up to her spring statement next month, public sector finances recorded a surplus of £30.4bn at the start of the year, according to the Office for National Statistics. This was double the surplus recorded in January 2025. The figure is the largest January total since records began in 1993 and much higher than the forecast of £24bn made by the Office for Budget Responsibility, the government’s official forecaster, and a poll of City economists. Paul Dales, the chief UK economist at Capital Economics, said: “The economy started the year looking a lot healthier and will give the chancellor something positive to point to in her fiscal statement on 3 March.” The Guardian, February 20

Trump says world has 10 days to see if Iran agrees deal or 'bad things happen'
US President Donald Trump says the world will find out "over the next, probably, 10 days" whether the US will reach a deal with Iran or take military action. At the first meeting of his Board of Peace in Washington DC, Trump said of negotiations with the Islamic Republic about its nuclear programme: "We have to make a meaningful deal otherwise bad things happen." In recent days, the US has surged military forces to the Middle East, while progress was reported at talks between American and Iranian negotiators in Switzerland. The Iranian government has told the UN Secretary-General that it will regard US bases in the region as legitimate targets if used in any military aggression against Iran. Tehran's UN mission said in a letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres that Trump's rhetoric signalled a real risk of an attack - but it said Iran did not want a war. Democratic lawmakers, and some Republicans, have voiced opposition to any potential military action in Iran without congressional approval. In his remarks, Trump noted that Special Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who is also Trump's son-in-law, had "some very good meetings" with Iran. "It's proven to be, over the years, not easy to make a meaningful deal with Iran," he said. "Otherwise, bad things happen." BBC news, February 19

UK blocking Trump from using RAF bases for strikes on Iran
Sir Keir Starmer is blocking a request by President Trump to allow American planes to use British bases to attack Iran, telling him that it would be in breach of international law. In a rift with Washington, the prime minister is understood to have told Trump that the UK would not allow the use of British facilities at Diego Garcia and RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, which is home to America’s fleet of heavy bombers in Europe. Under the terms of long-standing agreements with Washington, these bases can only be used for military operations against third countries that have been agreed in advance with the government. The move prompted Trump on Wednesday to withdraw his support for Starmer’s deal to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. The Times, February 19

Christine Lagarde to leave ECB before the end of her 8-year term
Christine Lagarde is expected to leave the European Central Bank before her eight-year term as president expires in October 2027, according to a person familiar with her thinking. Europe’s top central banker, who joined the Frankfurt-based ECB in November 2019 from the IMF, wants to exit before the French presidential election in April next year. According to the person with knowledge of her thinking, Lagarde wants to enable outgoing French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to find a new head for one of the EU’s most important institutions. It is not clear when Lagarde’s departure will take place. “President Lagarde is totally focused on her mission and has not taken any decision regarding the end of her term,” the ECB said. European economists polled by the FT in December regarded Spain’s former central bank governor Pablo Hernández de Cos and his Dutch counterpart Klaas Knot as top picks to become the next president of the Eurozone central bank. Financial Times, February 18

US tech giant Nvidia announces India deals at AI summit
US artificial intelligence chip titan Nvidia unveiled tie-ups with Indian computing firms on Wednesday as tech companies rushed to announce deals and investments at a global AI conference in New Delhi. This week's AI Impact Summit is the fourth annual gathering to discuss how to govern the fast-evolving technology -- and also an opportunity to "define India's leadership in the AI decade ahead", organisers say. Mumbai cloud and data centre provider L&T said it was teaming up with Nvidia, the world's most valuable company, to build what it touted as "India's largest gigawatt-scale AI factory". "We are laying the foundation for world-class AI infrastructure that will power India's growth," said Nvidia boss Jensen Huang in a statement that did not put a figure on the investment. L&T said it would use Nvidia's powerful processors, which can train and run generative AI tech, to provide data centre capacity of up to 30 megawatts in Chennai and 40 megawatts in Mumbai. France 24, February 18

Excruciating tropical disease can now be transmitted in most of Europe, study finds
An excruciatingly painful tropical disease called chikungunya can now be transmitted by mosquitoes across most of Europe, a study has found. Higher temperatures due to the climate crisis mean infections are now possible for more than six months of the year in Spain, Greece and other southern European countries, and for two months a year in south-east England. Continuing global heating means it is only a matter of time before the disease expands further northwards, the scientists said. The analysis is the first to fully assess the effect of temperature on the incubation time of the virus in the Asian tiger mosquito, which has invaded Europe in recent decades. The study found the minimum temperature at which infections could occur is 2.5C lower than previous, less robust, estimates, representing a “quite shocking” difference, the researchers said. The Guardian, February 18

UK inflation rate falls to 3% in January
UK inflation fell sharply in January to 3 per cent, the lowest level in nearly a year, delivering a further boost to hopes for an interest rate cut as soon as next month after unemployment hit a five-year high. Inflation dropped from 3.4 per cent in December, according to figures published by the Office for National Statistics on Wednesday. January’s decline was in line with analysts’ expectations and took inflation down to the lowest level since March 2025. Inflation was driven downwards by airfares, petrol and food prices, while the rising cost of hotels and takeaways put upwards pressure on price growth. The Times, February 18

Firm assessing Covid vaccine harm replaced after costs spiral to £48m
Nearly £50m of taxpayers' money has been paid by the NHS to an outsourced firm assessing claims of medical harm caused by vaccines, the BBC has found. The figure is eight times the amount originally estimated for the assessment work carried out by Crawford & Company Adjusters - and almost £20m more than the total so far awarded to those injured or bereaved as a result of Covid vaccines. The firm's five-year contract, initially estimated to be worth £6m, has more than a year left to run - however a new company will start taking over the work in the coming months. The cost of the work by Crawford, and "level of contract spend", is because the volume of claims "has exceeded the anticipated levels", an NHS spokesperson told the BBC. More than 22,000 claims related to Covid vaccines have been made so far, most of them relating to the jab manufactured by AstraZeneca - but only about 1 per cent have resulted in compensation payouts. They are handled by the UK-wide Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme, for which Crawford has carried out medical assessments since March 2022. BBC news, February 18