TMR

EGYPTIAN regulators moved to ban Roblox Corp.’s gaming platform, as the Middle East’s most populous nation says it’s making a push to curb childrens’ exposure to potentially harmful online material.

The step by the Supreme Council for Media Regulation would see Egypt join several other countries — many in the Arab world — that have blocked or restricted Roblox. The ban will be coordinated with the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, the state-run Middle East News Agency said Wednesday.

The agency didn’t give a reason for the move. But another state outlet, Ahram Online, earlier this week indicated it was coming, citing an Egyptian senator calling for regulation of Roblox to “protect children’s moral and educational values” and “limit associated psychological and behavioral risks.”

Roblox said it values “our community of players and creators and believe our platform provides a safe and positive space for learning, creation, and play,” and that safety is a top priority.

“While no system is perfect, we have built rigorous safeguards that go beyond those of many other platforms and continue to invest heavily in innovation,” a Roblox spokesperson said in an emailed comment.

President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi last month called for curbs on the use of mobile phones by children, a move he said would be in line with efforts elsewhere in the world. Australia has banned social media for certain age groups, while France is moving toward similar legislation.

Egypt’s parliament has already taken up the issue, with the Senate on Sunday approving requests to discuss the dangers of social media and phone use by children, according to MENA. 

The government on Monday said regulatory steps may include requiring digital platforms to institute unified age classifications, effective verification and deterrent penalties. They might also require the companies to have representatives in Egypt. 

Roblox said last year it would restrict certain features on its platform across the Mideast in a move to address online safety concerns. It has been banned in countries such as Qatar and Turkey. –BLOOMBERG

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THE owner of the Nasdaq 100 Index is proposing to speed up the inclusion of newly listed, large-cap firms in the widely followed equity benchmark as a flurry of technology giants are slated to go public this year. 

Dubbed as the “fast entry” rule, the planned revision would allow a new listing to join the Nasdaq 100 after the first 15 trading days, Nasdaq said in a statement. That’s way shorter than the current waiting period of at least three months. 

The move highlights pressure on index providers to adapt to a world where companies wait much longer to list, putting enormous amounts of market value in play as soon as they enter public hands. Among companies expected to make initial public offerings this year is SpaceX, whose potential $1.3 trillion valuation would make it one of the biggest companies in the Nasdaq 100. 

“There could be concern that passive funds will be missing out in a scenario where the new stock does rally even further and then requires higher turnover when adding it in,” said Kaasha Saini, head of index strategy at Jefferies. “The proposed change would make the index more representative of the market in a timely way.” 

The Nasdaq 100 is directly benchmarked to more than $600 billion in exchange-traded funds globally and has been a key stock-market gauge as the artificial-intelligence boom delivered massive gains to the largest tech companies. With Nasdaq vying for IPOs against rivals like the New York Stock Exchange, the scale of the index funds tied to the Nasdaq 100 is likely to help its pitch to woo new listings. 

Other index managers such as MSCI have already adopted approaches that ensure a large IPO can be included not long after its debut. By contrast, an entry to the Nasdaq 100 now requires three months of seasoning — during which the stock establishes sufficient liquidity and price stability — and only occurs during December’s annual reconstitution. 

The “fast entry” rule is part of an industry consultation set to conclude later this month. If Nasdaq’s index-management committee approves it after soliciting the input, the change will take effect after the upcoming quarterly rebalance in March.

“As corporate structures evolve and index linked assets under management continue to grow, it’s increasingly important that the methodology ensures timely inclusion of the largest Nasdaq listed non financial companies and maintains replicability for passive managers,” Nasdaq said in a statement.

Invesco, whose $410 billion Nasdaq 100-tracking ETF is the largest of its kind and known by its ticker QQQ, calls the proposal the latest sign of Nasdaq’s commitment to innovation. “Evolution is a necessary element to ensure rules-based indices adapt to the changing market environment,” the fund manager said. 

To ensure the inclusion of the largest companies, Nasdaq also proposed calculating a market capitalization based on both listed and unlisted shares, rather than listed only currently. Yet that won’t affect the companies’ weightings in the index, since that will continue to be determined by value of the shares eligible for listing on the exchange. 

Another planned revision involves a stock’s free float, or the amount of shares available for trading. While the minimum 10% float requirement for eligibility will be removed, a new approach is designed for including companies whose shares are mostly owned by corporate insiders or restricted for trading. Specifically, those with free float below 20% will have their corresponding market value multiplied by a factor of 5, with a cap at 100%, when their index weight is calculated. That way, low-float stocks can preserve investability for funds that use the Nasdaq 100 as a benchmark. 

“Apparently the idea is to keep low-float firms in the index if they are economically large enough,” said Antti Petajisto, head of equities at Brooklyn Investment Group. –BLOOMBERG

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IN EARLY September, shortly after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a chummy meeting with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in China, he dispatched his national security adviser to Washington to help smooth over fraying ties. 

Ajit Doval came with a message for Secretary of State Marco Rubio: India wanted to put the acrimony between the two nations behind it and get back to negotiating a trade deal, according to officials in New Delhi familiar with the meeting, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private. 

Doval told Rubio that India wouldn’t be bullied by US President Donald Trump and his top aides, the people said, and would be willing to wait out his term, having faced other hostile US administrations in the past. But New Delhi wanted Trump and his aides to dial down their public criticism of India so they could get relations back on track, Doval said in the meeting.

At the time, India was smarting from Trump’s insults and the 50% tariffs he’d slapped on its goods in August. The US president had called India a “dead” economy with high tariffs and that it was funding Putin’s war in Ukraine by buying Russian oil. 

It wasn’t long after Doval’s meeting, which was previously unreported, that the first signs of an ease in tensions emerged. On Sept. 16, Trump called Modi on his birthday and praised him for doing a “tremendous job.” By the end of the year, the two leaders had spoken four more times on the phone as they inched toward a deal to bring down the tariffs. 

India’s Ministry of External Affairs and Modi’s office didn’t respond to emails seeking further information. A spokesperson for the US State Department said that in keeping with standard diplomatic practice, it does not disclose the details of private discussions.

On Monday, Trump announced he’d reached a trade agreement with Modi that would reduce tariffs on India’s goods to 18%, lower than most of its peers in Asia. A punitive 25% duty that the US leader had slapped on India for buying Russian oil was also scrapped. In turn, Trump said, India agreed to purchase $500 billion of US goods, switch to buying Venezuelan oil, and reduce tariffs on US imports to zero. Modi’s government hasn’t confirmed those details and neither side has published any documentation to codify the agreement. 

“The past year has been one where negotiators, both in the US and India worked feverishly to get us to this point,” Nisha Biswal, partner at The Asia Group and former US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “It benefits both the US and India that you have an India that is finally really opening up on global trade.” 

Publicly, there had been no indication from either side that a deal was imminent. As recently as last week, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said India still had a long way to go to convince Washington it was halting Russia crude buys. 

On Monday, officials in New Delhi were taken by surprise when Trump posted about the deal on social media. Many senior bureaucrats in the foreign and commerce ministries, even those who had been directly involved in the trade negotiations, were oblivious that a call had been scheduled between the leaders that day. Some were unable to confirm key details related to the tariff announcement when contacted by reporters late in the day.

Behind the scenes, though, New Delhi had been working to get relations gradually back on track. Doval’s meeting with Rubio in September was a signal to Washington that it sees the US as a long-term strategic partner and couldn’t afford to allow ties to deteriorate further.

The prevailing view in New Delhi was that India needed US capital, technology and military cooperation to deter China and meet Modi’s goals of making the South Asian nation a developed economy by 2047. Trump was just a blip over that time frame, officials in New Delhi said, and India needs to stay focused on doing what’s best over the long term.

“New Delhi was never going to sever relations with Washington following last year’s downturn in bilateral relations,” said Chietigj Bajpaee, a senior research fellow for South Asia at Chatham House. “India-US relations remain ‘sticky’ given the plethora of institutionalized and people-to-people linkages between both countries.”

“That being said,” he added, “the irrational exuberance that marked New Delhi’s earlier assessments of the bilateral relationship have faded.”

Relations had spiraled downward ever since Trump claimed credit in May for resolving a four-day clash between India and neighboring Pakistan, a boast that Modi vehemently rejected. In a tense call between the two leaders in June, Modi declined Trump’s request to come to the White House, where the US president was hosting Pakistan’s army chief at the time. In October, Modi skipped a summit in Malaysia to avoid a possibly awkward meeting with Trump.

The arrival of new US Ambassador Sergio Gor to New Delhi in December appeared to kick off more serious efforts to get relations back on an even keel. Gor, a former senior White House official and longtime member of Trump’s inner circle who is also close to Rubio, has repeatedly underscored the importance of US-India ties.

In his first public speech in his new role, Gor cast the tensions between the two countries as disagreements among “real friends,” which he said both sides were sure to resolve. He also announced India would be invited to join a US-led alliance, called Pax Silica, to strengthen supply chains.

A further thaw in ties was evident during a meeting between Gor and External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar last week, according to people familiar with the matter. Gor said in a social-media post that the two sides discussed “everything from defense, trade, critical minerals, and working toward our common interests,” adding: “Stay tuned for much more!”

Jaishankar is currently in the US, where he’s held talks with Rubio on trade and supply chains.

“This appears to conclude a difficult six-month period for US-India relations,” said Alexander Slater, former India head of the US-India Business Council. “It also adds to recent signals about where India’s economic future is likely headed” and “removes a key impediment to what had been India’s gradual but steady alignment with the West.”

Despite the rapprochement, India has reason to proceed cautiously with Trump, and is keen to assert its strategic autonomy. Modi’s viral moment with Xi and Putin, clasping hands and chuckling together, was meant to show Trump that it has other options, officials in New Delhi said. Modi rolled out the red carpet for Putin in December, showcasing ties with a country that remains an important source of weapons and diplomatic support dating back to the Cold War.

Last week, Modi clinched a free trade pact with the European Union after almost two decades of talks, coming just months after India’s trade deal with the UK — deals that showed India was serious about diversifying its trade relationships in the face of the impasse with the US, according to an official aware of the details.

Later this month, Modi will host Canada’s Mark Carney and Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in New Delhi, further using Trump’s new world order to forge closer economic and political ties with so-called “middle power” countries.

Still, the US remains a crucial partner for India, both as a market and as a source of investment. The nation ships about a fifth of its exports to the US, a large share of which are mobile phones and electronic goods, sectors that are key to Modi’s manufacturing ambitions. US companies lined up big investment pledges in India in recent months, especially in AI, including a combined pledge of $52 billion by Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in December. Alphabet Inc.’s Google announced $15 billion of investment in data centers in October. 

India is also becoming more important for the US financial industry. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has its biggest office outside of New York in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru, where it provides sophisticated IT and financial technology support to clients around the world. 

“The larger geopolitical factors or strategic factors that bind Indian and the US together are still in place,” said Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “India requires a great amount of capital, of investment, of technology transfer, investments. So the US is critical.” –BLOOMBERG

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THE Washington Post, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, began a round of job cuts on Wednesday that will shrink nearly all of its news departments, an effort to pare losses and restore the struggling newspaper to profitability. 

On a call with staff, management said the newspaper was closing its sports department, although it would retain several reporters to cover athletics from a cultural standpoint. The books section and Post Reports podcast will shut down. The digital and print editor desks will merge into one team.

The Post didn’t specify how many jobs were being eliminated. Bloomberg reported last month that the newspaper was planning to cut as many as 300 people, with significant reductions in sports and the foreign news staff. In the last three years, the Post’s workforce has shrunk by about 400 people, according to the Washington Post Guild. 

The publication that dominated coverage of the Watergate scandal in the 1970s “is taking a number of difficult but decisive actions today for our future, in what amounts to a significant restructuring across the company,” a spokesperson said. “These steps are designed to strengthen our footing and sharpen our focus on delivering the distinctive journalism that sets the Post apart and, most importantly, engages our customers.”

The company needed to take action to shore up its finances and “better position us in this rapidly changing era of new technologies and evolving user habits,” Executive Editor Matt Murray said in a note to newsroom staff on Wednesday.  

The newspaper will concentrate on areas where it has traditionally been strong and that resonate with readers, such as politics, national affairs and national security in Washington and abroad, Murray said. It will also continue to cover science, health, technology and business. 

The Post has been grappling with financial challenges for some time, Murray said. Changes to online search functions have significantly impacted the traditional media models, by diverting readers to AI summaries instead of linking directly to news articles. Murray said organic search at the Post has fallen by nearly half in the last three years, adding that it’s still early days of AI generated content, which is drastically reshaping user experiences and expectations.

“Today’s news is painful,” Murray said. “These are difficult actions.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said Tuesday it’s cutting approximately 50 positions, or about 15% of staff. The newspaper published its final print edition on Dec. 31 after 157 years in business. Cox Enterprises, the owner, said the changes are aimed at making the business more sustainable. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said last month it was shutting down on May 3.

Bezos, the co-founder of Amazon.com Inc., purchased the Post in 2013 and set about expanding the paper’s footprint, injecting much-needed investment. But in recent years, the Post, like other mainstream print publications such as the Los Angeles Times, has cut back as ad-revenue dried up and subscriptions shriveled. In 2023, the Post cut about 240 jobs, mostly through buyouts.

Bezos’ decision in 2024 to stop publishing presidential endorsements, ending decades of tradition, set off a firestorm of criticism, both inside and outside of the newspaper. Multiple editors and writers resigned. As many as 200,000 subscribers, or 8% of the total, canceled, National Public Radio reported at the time. Last year, the paper offered another round of buyouts.

Among employees affected by the latest round of cuts is Caroline O’Donovan, a technology reporter who covers Amazon and Microsoft Corp. Prior to joining the Post in 2022, she had co-written an investigation into Amazon’s delivery network that showed how pressure for productivity led to dangerous and deadly accidents.

The Post’s union said readers have sent thousands of letters to company leadership opposing the cuts. 

“If Jeff Bezos is no longer willing to invest in the mission that has defined this paper for generations and serve the millions who depend on Post journalism, then The Post deserves a steward that will,” the union said in a statement on social media. —BLOOMBERG

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BOEING Co. is eliminating about 300 supply chain jobs from its defense division, and is notifying affected workers this week, according to a person familiar with the move.

The job cuts are spread across a number of sites around the country, said the person, who asked not to be identified as the matter is confidential. The workforce reduction comes at a time when companies like Amazon.com Inc. and United Parcel Service Inc. are paring jobs and closely monitoring headcount. 

“Boeing regularly evaluates and adjusts its workforce to stay aligned to our commitments to our customers and communities,” the company said in an emailed statement, responding to a query on the layoffs.

Boeing is still in hiring mode, with more than 1,300 job openings, and is working to help affected employees find other positions at the company, the person said.

The planemaker’s headcount stood at 182,000 people at the end of 2025, rising by about 10,000 workers from a year earlier, according to federal filings. Boeing has been hiring as it integrates newly acquired Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc., steps up commercial jet production and begins work on the stealthy F-47 fighter jet for the Pentagon.

Boeing’s plans to trim staff were reported earlier by a Seattle NBC affiliate but did not include the specific number of jobs, among other details. –BLOOMBERG

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