Letter: Why the geopolitics of international currency choice matters
From Paul Hackett, Madison, NJ, US
Letter: How dressmakers measure up
From Penelope Woolfitt, London N10, UK
Letter: Long odds — finding life elsewhere in the universe
From Timo Strandberg, Professor Emeritus, Helsinki University Hospital, Helsinki, Finland
Letter: US household wealth and Trilussa’s chicken analogy
From Alberto Chies, Padua, Italy
Letter: Money is not a cure-all for the Church, but it does help
From The Reverend Prebendary Dr Christopher Moore, Member, General Synod, Fownhope, Herefordshire, UK
Letter: Reassuring sound of snow ploughs on Toronto streets
From Gillian Fenwick, Toronto, ON, Canada
Letter: Good to see large shoe sizes are not a footnote
From Adele de Segundo, New York, NY, US
Letter: Don’t dismiss the corrosive impact of lower-level crime
From Mark Johnson, Elloughton, East Yorkshire, UK
Correction: JPMorgan’s forecast of AI investment’s contribution to US GDP growth
In the first half of last year, JPMorgan estimated that AI spending contributed 1.1 percentage points to US GDP growth, not to US GDP as wrongly stated in an article on January 3
FT Crossword: Number 18,264
FT Crossword: Polymath number 1,369
US oil giant ExxonMobil tells Trump Venezuela is ‘uninvestable’
Chief executive Darren Woods pushes back against president’s call to rush back into troubled country
Farage vows to fight Starmer’s reset of EU ties and uphold Brexit
Reform UK leader launches party’s campaign for London local elections by targeting control of six councils
OpenAI and SoftBank to invest $1bn in energy and data centre supplier
SB Energy has a contract to build a data centre for the ChatGPT maker’s Stargate infrastructure project
Trump posted jobs data early on Truth Social
US president shared a graphic that included unpublished statistics 12 hours before the critical data release
Transcript: Trump trouble — Starmer’s tricky start to 2026
George Parker talks to Miranda Green, Robert Shrimsley and David Sheppard
Iran hardens crackdown on protests
Internet blackout continues as government tries to quell wave of unrest
How Elon Musk’s Grok spread sexual deepfakes and child exploitation images
Billionaire’s xAI start-up lacks adequate safeguards, say experts, but many AI models are trained on troubling material
Why Trump wants to ‘run’ other countries
The US president is now setting his eyes on interventions in Greenland, Cuba and Colombia.
California’s divisive plan to tax billionaires
The proposed levy on people worth 10 figures and above has rattled Silicon Valley and split Democratic leaders
Venezuela oil meeting as it happened: Exxon tells Trump Venezuela ‘uninvestable’ without big changes, Chevron says Venezuela output can increase 50% in next 18 to 24 months
US president seeks to win commitments from oil executives to invest up to $100bn
What is to stop Trump upending the rules in global finance too?
Action against Venezuela and sabre-rattling towards Greenland point to risks in US president’s approach to the Fed
High costs and family fallouts prompt wealthy to close investment offices
Number of private wealth-management companies for rich individuals has grown in the US over the past decade
EU member states back Mercosur trade deal
Majority of countries approve agreement with South American bloc despite opposition from European farmers