Business
UK social media campaigners among five denied US visas
Two British campaigners are among five people denied US visas after the State Department accused them of seeking to “coerce” American tech platforms into suppressing free speech.
Imran Ahmed, an ex-Labour adviser who now heads the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), and Clare Melford, CEO of the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), were labelled “radical activists” by the Trump administration and banned from entering the US.
A French ex-EU commissioner and two senior figures at a Germany-based anti-online hate group were also denied visas.
European leaders have condemned the measures, while the UK government said it is “fully committed” to upholding free speech.
“While every country has the right to set its own visa rules, we support the laws and institutions which are working to keep the internet free from the most harmful content,” a UK government spokesperson said.
French President Emmanuel Macron described the travel ban as “intimidation and coercion aimed at undermining European digital sovereignty” while the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said it was “unacceptable and an attempt to challenge our sovereignty”.
The US billed the measures as a response to people and organisations that have campaigned for restrictions on American tech firms, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying they belonged to a “global censorship-industrial complex”.
He said: “President Trump has been clear that his America First foreign policy rejects violations of American sovereignty. Extraterritorial overreach by foreign censors targeting American speech is no exception.”
Ahmed from the CCDH, which says it advocates for government action against hate speech and disinformation online, has links to senior Labour figures. He was previously an aide to Labour minister Hilary Benn, and Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney has served as a director of the group he founded.
The US government labelled Ahmed a “collaborator” for the CCDH’s purported past work with the Biden administration. BBC News has contacted the CCDH for comment.
Melford founded the GDI, a non-profit that monitors the spread of disinformation, in 2018.
US Undersecretary of State Sarah B Rogers accused the GDI of using US taxpayer money “to exhort censorship and blacklisting of American speech and press”.
A GDI spokesperson told the BBC that “the visa sanctions announced today are an authoritarian attack on free speech and an egregious act of government censorship”.
“The Trump Administration is, once again, using the full weight of the federal government to intimidate, censor, and silence voices they disagree with. Their actions today are immoral, unlawful, and un-American.”
Also targeted was Thierry Breton, the former top tech regulator at the European Commission, who suggested that a “witch hunt” was taking place.
Breton was described by the State Department as the “mastermind” of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which imposes content moderation on social media firms.
However, it has angered some US conservatives who see it as seeking to censor right-wing opinions. Brussels denies this.
Breton has clashed with Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and owner of X, over obligations to follow EU rules.
The European Commission recently fined X €120m (£105m) over its blue tick badges – the first fine under the DSA. It said the platform’s blue tick system was “deceptive” because the firm was not “meaningfully verifying users”.
In response, Musk’s site blocked the Commission from sharing adverts on its platform.
Reacting to the visa ban, Breton posted on X: “To our American friends: Censorship isn’t where you think it is.”
Also subject to bans were Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon of HateAid, a German organisation that the State Department said helped enforce the DSA.
In a statement to the BBC, the two CEOs called it an “act of repression by a government that is increasingly disregarding the rule of law and trying to silence its critics by any means necessary”.
They added: “We will not be intimidated by a government that uses accusations of censorship to silence those who stand up for human rights and freedom of expression.”
Business
Piyush Goyal Dismisses Rahul Gandhi’s Farmer Meet Video, Rebuts ‘Fake Narrative’ On India-US Trade Deal
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The minister offered a detailed reality check to counter what he termed ‘Rahul ji’s fakery’
Goyal reiterated that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policies are intrinsically linked to farmer welfare. (File Photo: PTI)
Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal has accused Congress leader Rahul Gandhi of orchestrating a “fake narrative” aimed at provoking India’s farming community. Responding to a video released on social media by the Leader of the Opposition on Friday, Goyal dismissed the interaction as a stage-managed performance featuring Congress activists masquerading as genuine farmer leaders. He asserted that the dialogue followed a predetermined script designed to mislead the public regarding the safeguards in the recent India-US trade deal.
Rahul Gandhi has alleged that “any trade deal that takes away the livelihood of farmers or weakens the food security of the country is anti-farmer”. He was pointing to the recently concluded India-US framework agreement for bilateral trade, which is expected to be signed after tweaks by the end of March.
Piyush Goyal offered a detailed reality check to counter what he termed “Rahul ji’s fakery”, placing on record that the Narendra Modi government has fully protected the interests of annadatas, fishermen, MSMEs, and artisans. The minister categorically clarified that sensitive crops like soyameal and maize have been granted no concessions whatsoever in the agreement, ensuring that domestic farmers remain shielded from competitive pressure. He criticised the opposition for repeating “baseless allegations” in an attempt to instill unnecessary fear among the rural population.
Addressing specific claims regarding apple and walnut imports, the minister provided a technical breakdown of the protectionist measures in place. He noted that while India already imports approximately 550,000 tonnes of apples annually due to high domestic demand, the new US deal does not allow unlimited entry. Instead, a strict quota has been established, far below current import levels, and subject to a Minimum Import Price (MIP) of Rs 80 per kg. With an additional duty of Rs 25, the landed cost of US apples will be roughly Rs 105 per kg—significantly higher than the current average landed cost of Rs 75 per kg from other nations—thereby ensuring Indian growers are not undercut. Similarly, for walnuts, the US has been offered a modest quota of 13,000 metric tonnes against India’s total annual import requirement of 60,000 metric tonnes, making it impossible for the deal to harm local producers.
Goyal also took a swipe at the historical record of the Congress party, pointing out the irony of its current stance. He reminded the public that during the Congress-led UPA era, India imported nearly $20 billion worth of agricultural products, including dairy items, which the current administration has strictly excluded from the US pact. He challenged Rahul Gandhi to explain his “betrayal of farmers” and questioned how much longer the opposition intended to peddle fabricated stories.
Concluding with the slogan “Kisan Surakshit Desh Viksit”, Goyal reiterated that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policies are intrinsically linked to farmer welfare. He maintained that the India-US agreement is a balanced framework that opens new markets for Indian exports like basmati rice and spices while keeping the nation’s agricultural backbone secure.
February 14, 2026, 05:29 IST
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The stock market has been quick to punish software firms and other perceived losers from the artificial intelligence boom in recent weeks, but credit markets are likely to be the next place where AI disruption risk shows up, according to UBS analyst Matthew Mish.
Tens of billions of dollars in corporate loans are likely to default over the next year as companies, especially software and data services firms owned by private equity, get squeezed by the AI threat, Mish said in a Wednesday research note.
“We’re pricing in part of what we call a rapid, aggressive disruption scenario,” Mish, UBS head of credit strategy, told CNBC in an interview.
The UBS analyst said he and his colleagues have rushed to update their forecasts for this year and beyond because the latest models from Anthropic and OpenAI have sped up expectations of the arrival of AI disruption.
“The market has been slow to react because they didn’t really think it was going to happen this fast,” Mish said. “People are having to recalibrate the whole way that they look at evaluating credit for this disruption risk, because it’s not a ’27 or ’28 issue.”
Investor concerns around AI boiled over this month as the market shifted from viewing the technology as a rising tide story for technology companies to more of a winner-take-all dynamic where Anthropic, OpenAI and others threaten incumbents. Software firms were hit first and hardest, but a rolling series of sell-offs hit sectors as disparate as finance, real estate and trucking.
In his note, Mish and other UBS analysts lay out a baseline scenario in which borrowers of leveraged loans and private credit see a combined $75 billion to $120 billion in fresh defaults by the end of this year.
CNBC calculated those figures by using Mish’s estimates for increases of up to 2.5% and up to 4% in defaults for leveraged loans and private credit, respectively, by late 2026. Those are markets which he estimates to be $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion in size.
‘Credit crunch’?
But Mish also highlighted the possibility of a more sudden, painful AI transition in which defaults jump by twice the estimates for his base assumption, cutting off funding for many companies, he said. The scenario is what’s known in Wall Street jargon as a “tail risk.”
“The knock-on effect will be that you will have a credit crunch in loan markets,” he said. “You will have a broad repricing of leveraged credit, and you will have a shock to the system coming from credit.”
While the risks are rising, they will be governed by the timing of AI adoption by large corporations, the pace of AI model improvements and other uncertain factors, according to the UBS analyst.
“We’re not yet calling for that tail-risk scenario, but we are moving in that direction,” he said.
Leveraged loans and private credit are generally considered among the riskier corners of corporate credit, since they often finance below-investment-grade companies, many of them backed by private equity and carrying higher levels of debt.
When it comes to the AI trade, companies can be placed into three broad categories, according to Mish: The first are creators of the foundational large language models such as Anthropic and OpenAI, which are startups but could soon be large, publicly traded companies.
The second are investment-grade software firms like Salesforce and Adobe that have robust balance sheets and can implement AI to fend off challengers.
The last category is the cohort of private equity-owned software and data services companies with relatively high levels of debt.
“The winners of this entire transformation — if it really becomes, as we’re increasingly believing, a rapid and very disruptive or severe [change] — the winners are least likely to come from that third bucket,” Mish said.
Business
Without Rera data, real estate reform risks losing credibility: Homebuyers’ body – The Times of India
New Delhi: More than 75% of state real estate regulators, Reras, have either never published annual reports, discontinued their publication or not updated them despite statutory obligation and directions from the housing and urban affairs ministry, claimed homebuyers’ body FPCE on Friday. It released status report of 21 Reras as of Feb 13.The availability of updated annual reports is crucial as these contain details of data on performance of Reras, including project completion status categorised by timely completion, completion with extensions, and incomplete projects. The ministry’s format for publishing these reports also specifies providing details such as actual execution status of refund, possession and compensation orders as well as recovery warrant execution details with values and list of defaulting builders.FPCE said annual report data is not only vital for homebuyers to assess system credibility, but is equally necessary for both state and central govts to frame effective policies, design incentivisation schemes, and develop tax policy frameworks.“Unless we have credible data proving that after Rera the real estate sector has improved in terms of delivery, fairness, and keeping its promises, we are merely firing in the air,” said FPCE president Abhay Upadhyay, who is also a member of the govt’s Central Advisory Council on Rera.As per details shared by the entity, seven states — Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Goa — have never published a single annual report since Rera’s implementation, and nine states, including Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Telangana, which initially published reports, have discontinued the practice.Upadhyay said when regulators themselves don’t follow the law, they lose the legal right to demand compliance from other stakeholders. “Their failure emboldens builders and weakens the very system they are meant to safeguard,” he said.
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