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Equities struggled on Wednesday as data showed US businesses unexpectedly shed jobs last month.The US private sector lost 32,000 jobs in November, according to payroll firm ADP, compared to a small gain expected by analysts.The jobs numbers reinforced concerns over the health of the US economy, which has struggled with dislocations and price rises caused by tariffs introduced by President Donald Trump’s administration.”There’s no way to portray that as good news, unless, of course, you’re a stock trader who is focused more on the likelihood for Fed cuts than you are about what it says about the economy,” said Steve Sosnick of Interactive Brokers.After opening lower, all three of Wall Street’s main indices had pushed into positive territory by mid-morning, with the jobs figures underpinning expectations that the US Federal Reserve will cut interest rates next week.The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite slid back into the red.”The modest fall in the ADP payrolls measure in November… should be enough to persuade the FOMC to vote for another cut next week,” said Stephen Brown at Capital Economics.Money markets now put the chances of the Fed cutting interest rates on December 10 at nearly 90 percent.Lower interest rates make it easier for companies and consumers to borrow money, so the prospect of Fed rate cuts tends to boost stocks.Optimism over US rate cuts won an additional boost from reports that Trump’s top economic adviser Kevin Hassett — a proponent of more rate reductions — is the frontrunner to take the helm at the Fed when Jerome Powell’s tenure ends in May.Investors are also looking ahead to the release on Friday of the Fed’s preferred gauge of inflation — the personal consumption expenditure (PCE) index.Investors see the Fed cutting rates three times next year, which has been a factor weighing on the dollar.The euro hit a seven-week high against the dollar, noted analyst Axel Rudolph at trading platform IG. “The US central bank is expected to cut rates in December with a near 89 percent probability whereas the ECB isn’t likely to do so for much of next year,” he said.Meanwhile the pound gained one percent against the dollar, also receiving a boost from data showing stronger than expected activity from the UK services sector.Stronger sterling weighed on London’s benchmark FTSE 100 stock index, which features major companies earning in dollars, and which ended the day down 0.1 percent.A recovery in Bitcoin has also helped support equity markets.”A continued bounce in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has stoked a renewed speculative bid,” said Briefing.com analyst Patrick O’Hare.Bitcoin is back above $90,000. It plunged below $83,000 last month after having set a record high of $126,251 in October.Asian stock markets mostly rose Wednesday.Elsewhere, the Indian rupee weakened past 90 per dollar for the first time, extending declines through the year as New Delhi struggles to strike a trade deal with the United States.- Key figures at around 1630 GMT -New York – Dow: UP 0.4 percent at 47,685.20 pointsNew York – S&P 500: UP 0.1 percent at 6,837.46New York – Nasdaq Composite: DOWN less than 0.1 percent at 23,402.90London – FTSE 100: DOWN 0.1 percent at 9,692.07 (close) Paris – CAC 40: UP 0.2 percent at 8,087.42 (close)Frankfurt – DAX: DOWN less than 0.1 percent at 23,693.71 (close)Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 1.1 percent at 49,864.68 (close) Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 1.3 percent at 25,760.73 (close)Shanghai – Composite: DOWN 0.5 percent at 3,878.00 (close)Euro/dollar: UP at $1.1664 from $1.1622 on TuesdayPound/dollar: UP at $1.3341 from $1.3209Dollar/yen: DOWN at 155.03 yen from 155.86 yenEuro/pound: DOWN at 87.43 pence from 88.00 penceBrent North Sea Crude: UP 1.2 percent at $63.19 per barrelWest Texas Intermediate: UP 1.4 percent at $59.47 per barrelburs-rl/rlp

The Kremlin said Wednesday that its army’s recent battlefield successes in Ukraine had bolstered its position in talks to end the fighting, as both Moscow and Kyiv prepared for more negotiations with the US.US President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner negotiated into the early hours with Vladimir Putin — but no breakthrough for a peace settlement was announced.The Kremlin said no “compromise” was found on the crucial issue of territories and that Ukraine’s participation in NATO remained a “key” question in the talks.The White House had previously voiced optimism about its plan to end Europe’s worst conflict since World War II but that hope appeared to fade on Wednesday — with Moscow saying it had found parts of the plan “unacceptable”.Witkoff and Kushner brought an updated version of a US plan to end the war.Russia’s advance in eastern Ukraine gathered pace last month and Putin has said in recent days Moscow is ready to fight on to seize the rest of the land it claims if Kyiv does not surrender it.”The progress and nature of the negotiations were influenced by the successes of the Russian army on the battlefield in recent weeks,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov — who took part in the US-Russia talks — told reporters including AFP.”Our Russian soldiers, through their military exploits, have helped make the assessments of our foreign partners regarding the paths to a peace settlement more appropriate,” he added.Moscow insisted it was incorrect to say Putin rejected the plan in its entirety.It also said Russia was still committed to diplomacy — despite the Russian leader issuing a stark warning that Moscow was “ready” to fight Europe if it wanted war.  “We are still ready to meet as many times as is needed to reach a peace settlement,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. But Germany said Putin’s rhetoric was “aggressive” and said it does not “currently see any signs that Russia is shifting into negotiating mode.” – Ukraine role in NATO ‘key’ in talks -Moscow went to war in Ukraine in February 2022, saying it wanted to prevent Kyiv joining NATO — a prospect that Ukraine and the Western alliance have called a pretext to start the fighting and that they say was not going to happen.Since the full-scale offensive, Kyiv has said that joining the Western alliance would protect it from future Russian attacks.Trump has repeatedly ruled out Ukrainian membership in the bloc.Ushakov said the issue was “key” at the talks.The Russian official said the US envoys would “take into account” Moscow’s “considerations and our key proposals” — without elaborating on what they were.Trump — who has expressed frustration with both Moscow and Kyiv for not finding a solution to the conflict — has yet to comment on the outcome of the talks. – Ukraine to hold talks with EU, US -As the Americans returned from Moscow, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky announced his top negotiator Rustem Umerov and army chief Andriy Gnatov were headed for Brussels, where NATO foreign ministers were due to discuss Washington’s push to end the fighting.Umerov and Gnatov will also travel to the US to meet with Trump’s envoys, Zelensky said on social media.Zelensky has said that any peace deal for the conflict should make sure Moscow won’t attack again.The fresh talks come as NATO pledges to buy hundreds of millions of dollars worth of US arms for Kyiv. – ‘Keep fight ongoing’ -NATO chief Mark Rutte said it was positive that peace talks were ongoing but that the alliance should make sure that “Ukraine is in the strongest possible position to keep the fight going.”European countries have expressed fears Washington and Moscow will reach agreements without them, and have spent the last weeks trying to amend the US plan so that it does not force Kyiv to capitulate. In Moscow, tensions with Europe were palpable, with Putin delivering an exceptionally hawkish statement on Tuesday.”We are not planning to go to war with Europe, but if Europe wants to and starts, we are ready right now,” he said.His spokesman on Wednesday accused Europe of being “obsessed with inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia”.Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine, which has killed thousands, has also been accompanied by a crackdown on dissent at home unseen since the Soviet era. 

Russia and Ukraine said Wednesday they were ready for more talks with the United States to end almost four years of war, after US envoy Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner left the Kremlin with no breakthrough on a peace deal.Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s talks with the US officials ended in the early hours of Wednesday, with neither side announcing concrete progress.The Kremlin said that no “compromise” had been found on the crucial question of territories.The morning after the meeting, the Kremlin said it had told the Americans what was “unacceptable” to them.Witkoff and Kushner brought an updated version of a US plan to end Europe’s bloodiest war in 80 years, after the US held talks with Kyiv.The Kremlin insisted it was incorrect to say Putin had rejected the plan in its entirety, and that Russia was still committed to diplomacy — despite the Russian leader issuing a stark warning that Moscow was “ready” to fight Europe if it wanted war.”We are still ready to meet as many times as is needed to reach a peace settlement,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky says any deal should offer lasting peace and ensure Moscow does not attack again.- NATO ministers meeting -As the Americans returned from Moscow, Zelensky announced that his top negotiator Rustem Umerov and army ground chief Andriy Gnatov were headed for Brussels, where NATO foreign ministers were gathering.They will also travel to the US to meet with Trump’s envoys, Zelensky said on social media.Washington’s Steve Witkoff has held a string of Kremlin meetings but has so far not met Ukrainian officials.NATO foreign ministers are due to discuss Washington’s push to end the fighting in Brussels. “Ukrainian representatives will brief their colleagues in Europe on what is known following yesterday’s contacts by the American side in Moscow,” Zelensky said on social media. The fresh talks come as NATO pledges to buy hundreds of millions of dollars worth of US arms for Kyiv. “The peace talks are ongoing, that’s good, but at the same time, we have to make sure that whilst they take place — and we are not sure when they will end — that Ukraine is in the strongest possible position to keep the fight going,” NATO chief Mark Rutte said. – Kremlin blasts Europe – European countries have expressed fears Washington and Moscow will reach agreements without them, and have spent the last weeks trying to amend the US plan so that it does not force Kyiv to capitulate. In Moscow, tensions with Europe were palpable.Putin delivered an exceptionally hawkish statement on Tuesday ahead of meeting the Americans.”We are not planning to go to war with Europe, but if Europe wants to and starts, we are ready right now,” he said.His spokesman on Wednesday accused Europe of being “obsessed with inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia”.Moscow has felt emboldened in recent months by the growing pace of its army’s advance in Ukraine.Earlier this week, Russia claimed control of east Ukrainian hub of Pokrovsk.Ukraine on Tuesday said that fighting for the town — which had 60,000 people before Moscow launched its 2022 offensive — was ongoing. Moscow on Wednesday claimed another village in the Zaporizhzhia region, where it has also made considerable advances in recent weeks. Russia occupies large swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine.Putin has insisted that Kyiv surrender the four Ukrainian regions that Moscow has claimed as its own for any peace deal to be possible.

Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernandez is not planning any immediate return to his country due to threats for his life, his wife told AFP, after the former leader received a surprise pardon from President Donald Trump. From her home in Tegucigalpa, Ana Garcia thanked the US president, saying the pardon put an end to an “injustice” that she blamed in part on former Democratic President Joe Biden.”He’s not thinking about returning to public or political life, but rather a private life where we can have time as a family and return to our professions,” she said. They are both lawyers. “The situation for him isn’t easy due to the insecurity, the threats against his life, and the constant hate speech this government has directed against him,” Garcia said.Juan Orlando Hernandez was released from a West Virginia prison on Monday after Trump’s pardon and just days after Honduras held s presidential election. He had been sentenced last year to more than four decades behind bars.”We’re just now processing the news. I hadn’t been able to see him, to speak freely with him” Garcia added.Hernandez was convicted of helping to smuggle hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States starting in 2004, long before he became president.During his two terms at the helm of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, Hernandez was thought of as a loyal ally in the US-led war on drugs.But prosecutors charged Hernandez with using drug money to enrich himself, finance his political campaigns and commit electoral fraud in the 2013 and 2017 elections.In March 2024, he was convicted and in June that year sentenced to 45 years behind bars.Hernandez “has been, according to many people that I greatly respect, treated very harshly and unfairly,” said Trump, whose administration has killed dozens of alleged but unproven drug smugglers in boat strikes in Latin America.Garcia called the pardon a “surprise” after the former president sent a letter to Trump, who had also received a formal legal request for the pardon. “We weren’t expecting a response. I don’t know why it came out the way it did, but President Trump chose to express his will that way, and I am grateful for what he did for my husband, for bringing justice in the face of a terrible injustice,” she said.

European and Asian stock markets mostly rose Wednesday following a resumption of Wall Street’s rally, but gains were muted as investors await the last tranche of US data before next week’s Federal Reserve meeting.With a cut to US interest rates expected, trading has softened ahead of key indicators this week that could still play a role in the central bank’s planning over the next year.Most in focus are the private jobs report from payrolls firm ADP on Wednesday and Friday’s personal consumption expenditure (PCE) index — the Fed’s preferred gauge of inflation.”The justification for a rate cut next week centres around weakness in the (US) jobs market,” noted Joshua Mahony, chief market analyst at trading group Scope Markets.”While we are seeing confidence return for the US tech stocks, fears around an AI bubble will undoubtedly play a key role for investors going forward,” he added.Money markets have put the chances of a December 10 cut at around 90 percent, with another three forecast by the end of next year, weighing on the dollar.The pound was up 0.5 percent against the dollar on UK data showing stronger than expected activity from the British services sector.Stronger sterling weighed on London’s benchmark FTSE 100 stock index, which features major companies earning in dollars.Optimism over US rate cuts has meanwhile won an additional boost from reports that President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser Kevin Hassett — a proponent of more reductions — is the frontrunner to take the helm at the Fed when Jerome Powell’s tenure ends in May.While a number of bank decision-makers have thrown their hat in the ring for a reduction, there remains differences on the policy board about the need to target the soft labour market or stubbornly high inflation.Elsewhere on Wednesday, the Indian rupee weakened past 90 per dollar for the first time, extending declines through the year as New Delhi struggles to strike a trade deal with the United States.- Key figures at around 1050 GMT -London – FTSE 100: DOWN 0.2 percent at 9,680.66 pointsParis – CAC 40: FLAT at 8,073.80Frankfurt – DAX: UP 0.2 percent at 23,751.63Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 1.1 percent at 49,864.68 (close) Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 1.3 percent at 25,760.73 (close)Shanghai – Composite: DOWN 0.5 percent at 3,878.00 (close)New York – Dow: UP 0.4 percent at 47,474.46 (close)Euro/dollar: UP at $1.1665 from $1.1622 on TuesdayPound/dollar: UP at $1.3283 from $1.3209Dollar/yen: DOWN at 155.52 yen from 155.86 yenEuro/pound: DOWN at 87.81 pence from 88.00 penceBrent North Sea Crude: UP 1.3 percent at $63.26 per barrelWest Texas Intermediate: UP 1.5 percent at $59.52 per barrel

Asian markets mostly rose Wednesday following a resumption of Wall Street’s rally, but gains were muted as investors await the last tranche of US data before next week’s Federal Reserve meeting.With a third successive interest rate cut already priced in, trading has softened ahead of key indicators this week that could still play a role in the central bank’s planning over the next year.Most in focus are the private jobs report from payrolls firm ADP, which is due later Wednesday, and Friday’s personal consumption expenditure (PCE) index, which is the Fed’s preferred gauge of inflation.Money markets have put the chances of a December 10 cut at around 90 percent, with another three forecast by the end of next year.The optimism has also been boosted by reports that President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser Kevin Hassett — a proponent of more reductions — is the frontrunner to take the helm at the Fed when Jerome Powell’s tenure ends in May.But while a number of bank decision-makers have thrown their hat in the ring for a reduction, observers said there appeared to still be some differences on the policy board about the need to target the soft labour market or stubbornly high inflation.And Andrew Brenner at NatAlliance Securities said this could lead to a “hawkish cut”.IG market analyst Fabien Yip wrote: “Friday’s core PCE index represents the final major inflation gauge before the Fed’s December policy meeting.”Any deviation could alter expectations regarding the Fed’s policy stance, particularly as the central bank weighs inflation persistence against a softening labour market.””The release of personal income and spending data alongside the PCE will provide additional perspective on consumer resilience,” Yip said.While calls for a rate cut have been driven by worries over the jobs outlook and signs the world’s top economy was slowing, the National Retail Federation provided some early festive cheer by releasing an upbeat appraisal of the “Black Friday” holiday shopping weekend.A record 202.9 million consumers shopped over the five-day stretch, topping estimates, the NRF said, adding that the reading “reflects a highly engaged consumer”.All three main indexes on Wall Street ended in the green, and most of Asia followed suit.Tokyo piled on more than one percent with Seoul, while Sydney, Singapore, Wellington, Taipei and Jakarta were also up.Hong Kong, Shanghai, Mumbai, Bangkok and Manila fell.London opened in the red, while Paris and Frankfurt rose.Bitcoin climbed back above $90,000, recovering from this week’s swoon that saw it lose almost 10 percent amid a risk-off start to the week for risk assets.However, sentiment in the crypto sector remains soft after the unit plunged last month to as low as $80,550, having hit a record above $126,250 in October.The Indian rupee weakened past 90 per dollar for the first time, extending declines through the year as New Delhi struggles to strike a trade deal with the United States.Dilip Parmar, an analyst at HDFC Securities, told AFP the rupee’s fall was “first and foremost” an “imbalance of demand and supply” with foreign fund outflows and trade deal uncertainties adding fuel to the fire.But another key factor, Parmar added, was a lack of “big and impactful” interventions from India’s central bank.Analysts believe the Reserve Bank of India has this year sporadically defended the rupee through aggressive dollar sales to support key levels, but also appears of late to be allowing greater currency flexibility.”Defending a specific level in the current macro backdrop would be costly and counterproductive,” Raj Gaikar, research analyst at SAMCO Securities, told AFP.”With inflation running well below earlier expectations, the policy priority has shifted toward supporting growth rather than expending reserves to hold an artificial line,” he said.- Key figures at around 0815 GMT -Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 1.1 percent at 49,864.68 (close) Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 1.3 percent at 25,760.73 (close)Shanghai – Composite: DOWN 0.5 percent at 3,878.00 (close)London – FTSE 100: DOWN 0.1 percent at 9,694.82 Dollar/yen: DOWN at 155.71 yen from 155.86 yen on TuesdayEuro/dollar: UP at $1.1643 from $1.1622 Pound/dollar: UP at $1.3242 from $1.3209Euro/pound: DOWN at 87.92 pence from 88.00 penceWest Texas Intermediate: UP 0.5 percent at $58.95 per barrelBrent North Sea Crude: UP 0.5 percent at $62.74 per barrelNew York – Dow: UP 0.4 percent at 47,474.46 (close)

US Republicans narrowly avoided an embarrassing scare Tuesday, holding a district in deeply conservative Tennessee with a sharply reduced majority that underscored voter unease in one of Donald Trump’s safest bastions.Retired special-operations pilot Matt Van Epps defeated Democrat Aftyn Behn by an eight-point margin, according to projections from The New York Times and CNN — a steep drop from Trump’s 22-point romp in 2024 — in a race that had unexpectedly tightened into a referendum on the president’s standing.The result in the race for Tennessee’s 7th District House seat spared Republicans a political shockwave, but the trimmed margin set off alarms in a party already fretting over its threadbare House majority and the risk of further erosion in 2026.The Republican winning margin has been between 22 and 47 points in the last seven elections for that seat.Trump was quick to celebrate Van Epps’s victory in multiple posts to his Truth Social platform.”Congratulations to Matt Van Epps on his BIG Congressional WIN in the Great State of Tennessee. The Radical Left Democrats threw everything at him, including Millions of Dollars,” Trump wrote.The Republican win comes amid a run of Democratic momentum. Just weeks ago, Democrats swept major races in Virginia and New Jersey and won the New York mayoralty, a string of victories widely interpreted as a rebuke to Trump’s return to power.The party has noticed — and so has Trump.The president held a tele-rally Monday alongside Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who campaigned throughout the day with the Republican candidate. “HE WILL BE A GREAT CONGRESSMAN and, unlike his Opponent, he cherishes Christianity and Country Music,” Trump posted soon after polls opened.Van Epps, a West Point graduate and retired special-operations helicopter pilot, is running as an unwavering Trump loyalist focused on law-and-order, border security and low taxes. – Steep drop -He faced Democratic state representative Behn, a former social worker who has pushed progressive legislation on grocery-tax relief, rural health care, abortion access and marijuana reform.During the campaign, Republicans zeroed in on Behn’s social media posts from the 2020 racial justice protests, in which she amplified “defund the police” slogans and shared a message appearing to justify burning down a police station. Tennessee’s 7th District — stretching from Nashville’s Music Row through affluent suburbs and down to conservative rural counties — normally delivers Republicans around 60 percent of the vote. But the last Emerson College/The Hill poll before the election showed Van Epps at 48 percent to Behn’s 46 percent, well within the margin of error. Early polls in October had Van Epps up by as many as eight points, but also flagged elevated Democratic enthusiasm.Republican insiders predicted a five-point Van Epps win — a steep drop from former congressman Mark Green’s 2024 landslide — and conceded that anything tighter would be alarming. A loss, however unlikely, would have electrified Democrats and forced Republican strategists to rethink their entire 2026 defense map.Both parties flooded the district with cash and operatives, with Van Epps and his outside backers spending $3.5 million on ads, according to Punchbowl News, while Democratic groups invested $2.4 million.

As planes make their final approach to Washington DC’s Dulles Airport, just below lies Ashburn, a town otherwise known as Data Center Alley — where an estimated 70 percent of all global internet traffic at any moment finds its way.Decades ago, the expanse of empty lots, forest and farmland in this corner of northern Virginia was slowly filled with suburban development. Then came the advent of the internet and an influx of data center builders. They emerged with pledges of tax revenue and investment in return for building structures that, while not pleasing to the eye, were the backbone of a digitally connected world.Why here? A combination of strategic location, robust infrastructure, pro-business policies, and affordable energy helps explain it. The Pentagon and the US government are just down the road, as were the headquarters of AOL, the early web giant that once defined being online.The benefits to Ashburn from these anonymous buildings over the past two decades are undeniable.Woven through the expanse of data centers are new stores, residential neighborhoods, an ice skating rink and public facilities that prove this town is in no way short of money.Ashburn is in Loudoun County, the richest county per capita in the United States, with towns the world over looking at the Washington suburb as a way to win the future — even if others see it as a cautionary tale.Among its 40,000 citizens, Ashburn alone has 152 data centers currently in operation over its 40 square kilometers (15.4 square miles), with more bursting from the ground, part of an AI investment boom creating a race for ever more massive structures.In 2025, private companies are spending roughly $40 billion a month on data center construction in the United States, according to the US Census Bureau, much of that for megaprojects by the major AI players: Google, Amazon, Microsoft and OpenAI.This compares to just $1.8 billion a decade ago.- Off limits -AFP reporters were given a tour of a typical data center facility by Digital Realty, a specialized real estate company that operates 13 data centers in Ashburn.”We provide not only the space that you see here, but the power, the cooling and the connectivity,” said Chris Sharp, Chief Technology Officer at Digital Realty.The servers in any given data center give life to basically anything we do online.Computer rooms here — which are strictly off limits to outsiders — are filled with racks of servers for a single client or broken into separate “cages” serving smaller clients. The emergence of AI has catapulted the industry to another dimension, creating new challenges as tech giants, caught in a bitter AI rivalry, scour the globe to build AI-capable data centers quickly.These new generation buildings require unprecedented levels of power, cooling technology and engineering: servers running Nvidia’s graphics processing units, necessary for training AI, are incredibly heavy, requiring bigger and sturdier structures that need massive amounts of electricity.”If we think about Virginia alone, just the data centers last year used about as much electricity as all of New York City,” said Leslie Abrahams, deputy director of the Energy Security and Climate Change program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.Data servers deploying ChatGPT-like technologies run very hot and require new-generation liquid cooling—air conditioning will no longer do the job—and in most cases this means access to local water.Not surprisingly, the new necessities have made new constructions a harder sell.”Growing up, we started to see a few data centers, but honestly, not at this accelerated pace — they’re just popping up everywhere,” said Makaela Edmonds, a 24-year-old who grew up in Ashburn.Her family’s home is part of a suburban development that abuts a massive construction site.Another issue is that jobs in data centers are mostly found at the construction phase. Teams in hard hats work the sites, often around the clock. But once operational, many sites betray very little human activity.”The benefits of data centers tend to be more regional, national and global than local,” Abrahams said. – ‘Monumental growth’ -In a major shift, local politicians in northern Virginia are now running campaigns to slow the expansion instead of promising to attract more construction.For companies like Digital Realty, the challenge is to work with communities to prepare them for what bringing in data centers entails.Despite any doubts, the demand is not abating.”The growth and demand in this market is monumental,” said Sharp.

Flipping their gender setting to “male” and even posting photos with fake mustaches, a growing number of women on LinkedIn have posed a provocative challenge to what they allege is an algorithmic bias on the platform.Last month, female users began claiming that adopting a male identity had dramatically boosted their visibility on the professional networking site, setting off a chain reaction.Women adopted male aliases — Simone became Simon — swapped their pronouns for he/him, and even deployed AI to rewrite old posts with testosterone-laden jargon to cultivate what they describe as an attention-grabbing alpha persona.To add a dash of humor, some women uploaded profile photos of themselves sporting stick-on mustaches.The result?Many women said their reach and engagement on LinkedIn soared, with once-quiet comment sections suddenly buzzing with activity.”I changed my pronouns and accidentally broke my own LinkedIn engagement records,” wrote London-based entrepreneur and investor Jo Dalton, adding that the change boosted her reach by 244 percent.”So here I am, in a stick-on moustache, purely in the interest of science to see if I can trick the algorithm into thinking I am a man.”- ‘Gendered discrepancies’ -When a female AFP reporter changed her settings to male, LinkedIn’s analytics data showed the reach of multiple posts spiked compared to a week earlier.The posts cumulatively garnered thousands more impressions compared to the previous week.Malin Frithiofsson, chief executive of the Sweden-based Daya Ventures, said the LinkedIn experiment reflected “gendered discrepancies” that professional women have felt for years.”We’re at a point where women are changing their LinkedIn gender to male, swapping their names and profile photos, even asking AI to rewrite their bios as ‘if a man wrote them,'” Frithiofsson said.”And their reach skyrockets.”LinkedIn rejected accusations of in-built sexism.”Our algorithms do not use gender as a ranking signal, and changing gender on your profile does not affect how your content appears in search or feed,” a LinkedIn spokesperson told AFP.However, women who saw their engagement spike are now calling for greater transparency about how the algorithm — largely opaque, like those of other platforms — works to elevate some profiles and posts while downgrading others.- ‘More successful’ -“I don’t believe there’s a line of code in LinkedIn’s tech stack that says ‘if female < promote less,'” Frithiofsson wrote in a post on the site. “Do I believe gendered bias can emerge through data inputs, reinforcement loops, and cultural norms around what a ‘professional voice’ sounds like? Yes. Absolutely.”LinkedIn’s Sakshi Jain said in a blog post that the site’s AI systems and algorithms consider “hundreds of signals” — including a user’s network or activity — to determine the visibility of posts.Rising volumes of content have also created more “competition” for attention, she added.That explanation met with some skepticism on the networking site, where more visibility could mean enhanced career opportunities or income.Rosie Taylor, a Britain-based journalist, said the boost her profile got “from being a ‘man’ for just one week” saw unique visitors to her newsletter jump by 161 percent compared to the previous week.That led to an 86 percent spike in new weekly subscriptions via LinkedIn.”Who knows how much more successful I might have been if the algorithm had thought I was a man from the start?” Taylor said.burs-ac/msp/iv

US pop singer Sabrina Carpenter on Tuesday disavowed the use of one of her songs in a video shared by the White House on social media, describing the clip depicting immigration enforcement raids as “evil and disgusting.”The video, posted Monday, features Carpenter’s 2024 song “Juno” accompanying footage of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in action, tackling people and clipping handcuffs onto detainees.”This video is evil and disgusting. Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda,” Carpenter wrote in response to the White House post.White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson retorted: “Here’s a Short ‘n Sweet message for Sabrina Carpenter: we won’t apologize for deporting dangerous criminal illegal murderers, rapists, and pedophiles from our country. Anyone who would defend these sick monsters must be stupid, or is it slow?”Several other artists have protested President Donald Trump and his team’s use of their music. American singer and guitarist Kenny Loggins recently demanded the removal of a video posted by the president that used his hit “Danger Zone” from the movie “Top Gun.” The video used AI-generated images of Trump as a fighter pilot dropping excrement on political opponents.In 2024, Celine Dion condemned the use of one of her songs, “My Heart Will Go On,” in a campaign video, and Beyonce reacted similarly over use of her song “Freedom” the same year.