Crypto exchange Binance may have funded Iranian entities, reports say
Shortly after Donald Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the Binance founder, last fall, company employees revealed the cryptocurrency exchange may have funded Iranian entities with billions of dollars, according to a report by the New York Times.The discovery was made by a group of internal Binance investigators, who reportedly found that people in Iran had accessed more than 1,500 accounts on the crypto platform.Two of those accounts allegedly saw $1.7bn move to Iranian-backed groups that included Yemen’s Houthi militants throughout 2024 and 2025, according to the Wall Street Journal.The company investigators say they reported those transactions to Binance’s executives, but then were reportedly disciplined.
At least four of the employees were reportedly fired or suspended on allegations that included “violations of company protocol” in regards to the handling of client data.In a statement to the Guardian, a Binance spokesperson said the company “did not violate sanctions laws in respect of the transactions described”.The spokesperson also denied that internal investigators were dismissed for raising the discovery.“No investigator was dismissed for raising compliance concerns or for reporting potential sanctions issues,” reads the statement.Zhao founded Binance in 2017 and it went onto become the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
In 2023, Zhao pled guilty to money laundering and resigned from the company,He was sentenced to four months in prison,As part of the guilty plea, Zhao agreed to pay a $50m fine and was barred from any involvement in the business,In October, Trump pardoned Zhao, downplaying the crimes,Trump’s family crypto business, World Liberty Financial, has worked with Binance and Zhao attended a conference at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month.
“They say what he did was not even a crime,It wasn’t a crime,” Trump told reporters in October,“That he was persecuted by the Biden administration and so I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people,”Binance also pled guilty in 2023 and agreed to internal monitoring and a criminal fine of nearly $1,81bn, along with another $2.
51bn order of forfeiture to settle three criminal charges,The company also vowed to go after bad actors who used its platform for financial transactions, including customers from Iran,The Iranian transactions came to light inside the company before Trump’s pardon, according to the New York Times,The entities that reportedly received the funds include a chief foreign adversary that the Trump administration has reportedly been planning to strike,The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.
AstraZeneca boss Pascal Soriot’s pay rises to £17.7m
Pascal Soriot, the chief executive of Britain’s largest pharmaceutical company, received a 6.4% pay rise last year, taking his total remuneration to £17.7m.The AstraZeneca boss is in line for a further increase this year, potentially making him the UK’s highest-paid chief executive once again.Soriot received a salary of £1
Oil prices hit seven-month highs as tensions rise before US-Iran talks
Oil prices have reached seven-month highs, as traders reacted to heightened tensions between the US and Iran ahead of nuclear talks this week.US crude futures rose to $67.28 a barrel on Monday, while Brent crude touched its highest level since 31 July at $72.50 a barrel. Prices fell back late in the session, but were up again on Tuesday morning, approaching Monday’s highs
Meta agrees $60bn deal with chipmaker AMD despite AI bubble fears
The owner of Facebook has agreed to buy $60bn (£44.5bn) of artificial intelligence chips from the US semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices despite fears over the vast sums being spent on the AI industry.Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, has clinched the five-year deal in which it will also buy 10% of the chip company.AMD signed a similar pact with OpenAI last year, which was hailed as a vote of confidence in its chips and software, significantly boosting its stock price.A recent series of chip supply agreements underscores the AI industry’s appetite for processors
Police AI chief admits crime-fighting tech will have bias but vows to tackle it
A police chief has admitted artificial intelligence used to boost crime fighting will contain bias but pledged to combat the risks.Labour wants a dramatic expansion of police use of AI within England and Wales, with police chiefs also believing it could help keep law enforcement up to date with new criminal threats.Alex Murray told the Guardian that a new national police AI centre would recognise the risks of bias and minimise them.Bias in use of AI in policing could result in instances where algorithms – often trained on historical data reflecting past human prejudices – systematically produce unfair outcomes, such as overtargeting minority communities or misidentifying individuals based on race, gender, or socioeconomic status.Murray, the director of threat leadership with the National Crime Agency, and the national lead for AI, said: “Once you’ve recognised and minimised [bias], how do you train officers to deal with outputs to ensure that it is further minimised?“If you talk about live facial recognition or predictive policing, there will be bias, and you need to get in the data scientists and the data engineers to clean the data, to train the model appropriately, and then to test it
US hockey was bathed in a golden Olympic glow. Then Donald Trump and Kash Patel stepped in | Beau Dure
Keeping politics at arm’s length for the US men’s hockey team’s gold-medal matchup with Canada was always going to be difficult.The game fell on the 46th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice, when an underdog group of US college players upset the mighty Soviet Union team against the backdrop of the cold war. But the US team who took the ice on Sunday were no plucky band of amateurs making a stand for democracy against authoritarianism – a point underscored when the US and Canada met last year in the 4 Nations Face-Off. Canadian fans booed the Star-Spangled Banner and the US players, either unaware of, or unsympathetic to, Canadian desires to be neither the 51st US state nor the USA’s opponent in a scorched-earth trade war, dropped the gloves to fight their opponents as soon as the game commenced.Sunday’s game, though, was played with the utmost sportsmanship – and not just because Olympic rules punish fighting harshly
‘I felt tears welling in my eyes’: our readers’ Winter Olympics highlights
The magic, joy, tension, camaraderie and superhuman composure on show in Italy captivated readersMy favourite moment of the Winter Olympics was Johan Olav-Botn winning gold in the men’s individual biathlon, just a month after the death of his teammate and close friend, Sivert Bakken. Olav-Botn displayed superhuman composure – a prerequisite for anyone competing in biathlon – and he did not shut out the thought of his friend when under the highest pressure. Olav-Botn said that he “felt I was racing with him” on his last lap. To remain skiing and shooting, let alone standing, with that in mind is a feat of mental fortitude worthy of any Olympic gold. I felt tears welling in my eyes when he skied past the finish line and shouted: “Sivert, we did it!” Max Sundsbo, 22, LondonThe superb snow sports commentary from Ed Leigh and Tim Warwood
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