Hard Numbers: Much ado about Ma, EU-Russia holdouts, Ukrainians in Mexico, Oz raises interest rates

Hard Numbers: Much ado about Ma, EU-Russia holdouts, Ukrainians in Mexico, Oz raises interest rates
Gabriella Turrisi

9.4: Shares of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba plunged by as much as 9.4% on Tuesday after state broadcaster CCTV abruptly announced that someone named "Ma" had been detained. CCTV later clarified that it was not Jack Ma, Alibaba's billionaire founder caught in the crosshairs of Xi Jinping's tech crackdown.

2: The EU looks ready to ban Russian oil imports as a bloc over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But so far there are two holdouts: Hungary — whose PM Viktor Orbán is Vladimir Putin’s best EU buddy — and Slovakia, which claims its sole refiner can’t immediately switch to non-Russian crude.

500: Some 500 Ukrainian refugees are waiting in a makeshift camp in Mexico City for US immigration authorities to process their papers. President Joe Biden says they're welcome but has not exempted them from Title 42, a pandemic-era rule to curb immigration that requires US asylum-seekers to apply from a third country.

0.35: Australia's central bank upped interest rates by 0.35% Tuesday, the first hike in over a decade. It's a long-overdue move to combat rising inflation, expected to be a major campaign issue ahead of the parliamentary election on May 21.

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100: In his ongoing, and so-far fruitless, efforts to convince Vladimir Putin to stop the war in Ukraine, Donald Trump reportedly asked the EU to apply 100% tariffs on India and China, the Kremlin’s most important trade partners.

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This summer, Microsoft released the 2025 Responsible AI Transparency Report, demonstrating Microsoft’s sustained commitment to earning trust at a pace that matches AI innovation. The report outlines new developments in how we build and deploy AI systems responsibly, how we support our customers, and how we learn, evolve, and grow. It highlights our strengthened incident response processes, enhanced risk assessments and mitigations, and proactive regulatory alignment. It also covers new tools and practices we offer our customers to support their AI risk governance efforts, as well as how we work with stakeholders around the world to work towards governance approaches that build trust. You can read the report here.