TheChek News Flow

Washington’s strict blacklist rule amid national security concerns has forced Beijing to become self-sufficient with ‘incredible’ results

When Sama Bilbao y León, director general of the World Nuclear Association – a global industry body based in London – toured China’s nuclear facilities this summer, she was left speechless.

“I couldn’t close my mouth in amazement,” she admitted, stunned by China’s advanced capabilities and “incredible” industrial scale.

This awe-inspiring progress exists despite stringent US sanctions – including the 2019 blacklisting of China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) and the recent suspension of equipment licences – imposed over national security concerns.

Ironically, these very restrictions have backfired spectacularly. Instead of crippling China’s nuclear ambitions, the sanctions have forced Beijing to develop a fully self-sufficient nuclear ecosystem, achieving near-total domestic equipment production and rapid reactor deployment.

Now, as the US and Europe struggle with costly delays and atrophied supply chains in their own nuclear expansions, China’s sanctioned industry has become an unattainable benchmark of efficiency – and its exclusion threatens to stall the West’s own atomic energy revival.

“The current geopolitical situation at all levels is incredibly complex. But our position has always been that the nuclear industry is global, and we would like to see countries working together and sharing best practices and lessons learned,” said Bilbao y León.

The industrial leader, originally from Spain, has been calling on member countries to strike a balance between global cooperation and local participation to ramp up the supply chain.

The world is in a heated race to expand nuclear power capacity, with major countries – particularly the US and China – announcing ambitious goals recently, driven by concerns about climate change mitigation and energy security.

“Many countries are looking to triple or even quadruple their nuclear capacity, but achieving these goals will require rebuilding and reintegrating supply chains and industrial capabilities,” Bilbao y León told the South China Morning Post in an exclusive interview at the end of July.

“Everybody is taking note of what is happening in China,” she added.

History shows that supply chain bottlenecks have already stifled mega nuclear projects in developed countries. However, as geopolitical tensions intensify, Chinese technologies and suppliers are increasingly being scrutinised or even blocked, by the West.

Kevin Tu, a non-resident fellow at the Centre on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, said that, ideally, other countries could benefit from collaborating with China across multiple areas – such as plant design, construction, equipment procurement and talent training – as Beijing had undertaken one of the fastest nuclear power build-outs in history in recent years.

But the reality is far more complicated. Given the sector’s highly sensitive nature, it “will inevitably become politicised”, making international cooperation with China difficult, Tu noted.

Philip Andrews-Speed, senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, wrote in an email response to the Post that, “I think it is unlikely that any Western country – Canada, the US, Japan, South Korea, the UK or most EU member states – will choose a Chinese company as a vendor for a nuclear reactor for as long as distrust remains at current or higher levels.”

For example, last May, Hungary and China signed a nuclear energy cooperation agreement, encouraging capable Chinese enterprises to invest in Hungary. But Andrews-Speed pointed out that Hungary’s nuclear sector contracts have actually gone to Russia, their long-term nuclear technology supplier.

In 2022, China’s state-owned group CGN – which held a 20 per cent stake in the Sizewell C nuclear power plant project in Suffolk, eastern England – was forced to withdraw by the British government amid national security concerns.

Despite breaking ground on its first reactor almost 40 years after the US pioneered the tech, China is now building far more fission power plants than any other country. Around 10 new reactors have been approved by the Chinese government each year since 2022, putting China on track to overtake the United States and become the world’s largest generator of nuclear power by 2030.

According to data from the World Nuclear Association, seven of the 10 most recent projects to begin construction since last July belong to China, while the other three are from Russia, South Korea and Pakistan.

Thanks to the rapid development over the past three to four decades, “the entire industrial chain has been well-established”, said Zhao Chengkun, former executive deputy director of the expert committee of the China Nuclear Energy Association, with around 90 per cent of equipment domestically produced.

Meanwhile, China has established a robust system for cultivating a stable pool of skilled personnel, with a significant demand for professionals in the industry and related subjects in higher education, Zhao added.

Andrews-Speed, from the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, echoed Zhao.

“China has built an almost complete supply chain for nuclear power, along with the skilled labour force needed to build and operate the world’s fastest-growing fleet of plants,” he said.

However, the story is different when it comes to countries like the US and France – which once dominated nuclear technology development. Due to historical reasons such as public opposition, rising costs and regulatory challenges, construction of large-scale nuclear power plants in these countries has stagnated for decades.

“US and most European countries have not consistently built nuclear power plants, particularly gigawatt-scale pressurised water reactors, for many years. As a result, their industrial supply chains and talent bases have weakened considerably over time,” Tu said.

From a pragmatic standpoint, developing a robust supply chain takes time and necessitates international cooperation. Partnering with Chinese manufacturers represented a viable option, Tu said, “if political trust is rebuilt and geopolitical tensions are eased”.

The progress made by China and the West in developing third-generation nuclear power technology reflects precisely the impact that supply chain maturity can have on project construction.

The Flamanville Unit 3 reactor in northern France is owned and operated by the French company EDF. The project began in 2007, with commercial operations initially scheduled to start in 2012.

However, it has been repeatedly delayed due to various factors. In 2023, for example, work was halted for several months due to issues with welds in the main secondary system. The reactor was finally connected to the grid by the end of 2024, and the project has cost at least five times more than originally anticipated.

The Plant Vogtle Unit 4 in the state of Georgia – one of the first new nuclear units to come online in the US in over 30 years – is based on Westinghouse’s third-generation plus AP1000 reactor technology. Yet the project also faced an overall delay of around seven years and cost overruns, partly due to manufacturing defects and delays in delivering critical components, such as the main pump.

In contrast, the Fuqing 5 unit in southeastern China’s Fujian province – the first Hualong One model to enter commercial operation globally – set a record for construction time. It began construction in 2015 and entered commercial operation in January 2021 at a cost 20 to 30 per cent lower than that of its foreign competitors.

Although the Hualong One design was modelled on foreign technology, this milestone project has greatly boosted China’s self-reliance in terms of its supply chain and workforce.

According to a 2021 report by Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily, the project involved over 5,300 suppliers nationwide, with all core equipment produced domestically. The project also helped China to train professionals in the core technologies and construction of third-generation nuclear power plants.

China has exported at least 15 nuclear power units and research facilities worldwide. The K2 unit at the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant in Pakistan, which started operating in May 2021, is the first overseas nuclear power unit to use the Hualong One model.

In an article published in the prestigious journal Nature on July 28, several researchers from US institutes, including Harvard Kennedy School, examined how China had succeeded in avoiding the “cost escalation curse” faced by the nuclear industry through regulations and supply chain efforts.

China has been researching and developing its own reactor design based on French technology for two decades and has been producing simple components domestically for an even longer time.

Some Chinese-made nuclear components, such as tubes, ring cranes and charging pumps, cost half as much as their imported equivalents, according to the study.

In some cases, however, importing nuclear technologies is a more strategic choice, the author noted, citing the example of France’s deviation from the tried-and-tested US reactor design in favour of a national version in the 1980s, which hindered standardisation and caused construction costs to rise.

“As countries rush to expand nuclear capacities, they must combine affordability with safety, scalability, investor confidence and public trust. Without this, nuclear power will remain an expensive bet the world can ill afford,”the Nature article concluded.

Nuclear power is undergoing a global resurgence, with more than 30 countries pledging to triple global capacity by mid-century. Technology giants, including Amazon, Google and Microsoft, are also investing in nuclear power to fuel their energy-intensive AI data centres and reduce carbon emissions.

In May, the new German government dropped its long-held opposition to nuclear power. Denmark is also considering lifting its 40-year ban on atomic power to enhance its energy security amid the Europe-wide shift.

Also in May, US President Donald Trump signed executive orders to accelerate the construction of additional nuclear capacity with the goal of quadrupling the country’s installed capacity to 400 gigawatts (GW) by 2050.

The importance of nuclear power was also demonstrated in early July when Trump’s signature budget bill, officially known as the One Big Beautiful Bill, marked a striking shift towards fossil fuels and nuclear power.

The latest data from the World Nuclear Association shows that China currently has 58 operable reactors with a capacity of around 57GW. But according to a June report by the China Nuclear Energy Association, the country is set to build dozens of new reactors to raise its installed capacity to 200GW by the end of the next decade.

“Many countries have realised that there is a dire need for abundant, affordable, clean energy and electricity that is available 24/7,” said Bilbao y León.

For many countries, it is simply not possible to meet carbon emission goals in a cost-effective, timely manner without doubling down on nuclear power, and the quest for energy security and independence is increasingly urgent, she explained.

On top of that, as the world rapidly becomes more electrified, affordable new energy sources are needed to power industrial development and hi-tech sectors such as AI.

Andrews-Speed believes the issue for Western nuclear development is the ability to deliver projects on time and on budget – a management problem that will not easily be solved with China’s help only in the form of equipment and workforce. “But most Western governments would not allow a Chinese company to build one of their own reactor designs for them,” he said.

Nevertheless, he added that once Western companies get into the practice of building several reactors of the same design, they should become more efficient.

Les enquêteurs soupçonnent ce jeune migrant sans abri d’avoir tué quatre hommes en seize jours en raison de leur orientation sexuelle. Mais l’identité de deux victimes, des compagnons d’infortune du suspect, jette le trouble sur le déclenchement de cette folie meurtrière.

Quatre corps, un suspect, une hypothèse tenace de crimes homophobes, mais un mobile encore incertain. Onze jours après la découverte de quatre cadavres dans la Seine à Choisy-le-Roi (Val-de-Marne), le 13 août, un sans-abri d’une vingtaine d’années a été mis en examen, dimanche 24 août, pour « meurtres en concours » au préjudice des quatre victimes. Cette infraction rare, qui désigne les crimes sériels, ouvre une perspective vertigineuse : celle d’un tueur en série qui aurait commis quatre meurtres en seulement seize jours dans le même secteur.

L’identité de ce migrant désocialisé et précaire, tout comme ses motivations, demeurent confuses. En garde à vue, il s’est présenté comme un Algérien de 24 ans, né à Oran et prénommé « Ahmed », installé irrégulièrement depuis trois ans en France, où il travaillerait occasionnellement sur les marchés et dans le bâtiment. Mais les enquêteurs ont trouvé dans son squat un document en arabe portant sa photo laissant supposer qu’il s’appellerait en réalité Monji H. et serait de nationalité tunisienne, une identité qui a été confirmée par un de ses proches, explique au Monde une source proche de l’enquête.

Concernant les faits qui lui sont reprochés et son possible mobile, le suspect ne s’est pas montré plus disert. Durant ses quatre-vingt-seize heures de garde à vue, réalisée avec l’aide d’un interprète en raison de son niveau de français rudimentaire, il a nié les faits ou gardé le silence face aux éléments à charge accablants qui lui étaient présentés. Dans son dernier communiqué, publié dimanche, le parquet de Créteil n’avance d’ailleurs aucune hypothèse permettant d’expliquer cette folie meurtrière et ne retient pas, à ce stade, la circonstance aggravante qu’elle ait pu être déclenchée en raison de l’orientation sexuelle des victimes.

Deux corps partiellement dénudés

C’est pourtant bien aujourd’hui une des principales pistes suivies par les enquêteurs de la brigade criminelle de Paris. « Un mobile sexuel ne peut être exclu à ce stade », explique une source. Les quatre corps ont en effet été repêchés à proximité d’un endroit connu pour être un lieu de rencontres homosexuelles, et le suspect squattait dans un ancien local technique désaffecté servant à la gestion des eaux de la Seine, situé à quelques dizaines de mètres de là.

Mais ce sont surtout les premières constatations réalisées sur les victimes, portées disparues entre le 26 juillet et le 11 août, qui ont donné de l’épaisseur à ce mobile. Leur identification a été rendue particulièrement complexe en raison de la dégradation de certains corps. La victime la plus récente a été la première identifiée : il s’agit d’un Français de 48 ans domicilié à Créteil, dont les investigations ont établi qu’il était homosexuel et avait fréquenté ce lieu de rencontres le soir de sa disparition, le 11 août. Il a été repêché deux jours plus tard vêtu d’un tee-shirt et le bas de son corps « dénudé », précise le parquet.

Selon les informations du Monde, son ADN a été retrouvé mélangé avec celui du suspect sur le pantalon que portait ce dernier le jour du meurtre, au niveau du pubis et des cuisses, laissant entrevoir la possibilité qu’un rapport sexuel ait eu lieu entre le tueur et sa victime avant le crime. Des traces de strangulation, un mode opératoire susceptible de traduire une pulsion sexuelle, ont en outre été découvertes sur son corps, ainsi que sur une, et peut-être deux autres victimes. Un autre cadavre, dont le parquet ne précise pas l’identité, a quant à lui été découvert le pantalon « baissé au niveau des chevilles ».

« Pardon, pardon, Monsieur »

L’avant-dernière victime à avoir été tuée est un Algérien de 21 ans habitant à Choisy-le-Roi. Le 4 août, tandis qu’il se trouvait sur les bords de Seine à proximité du squat et discutait au téléphone avec un collègue, peu avant 22 heures, ce dernier l’avait entendu dire en arabe « pardon, pardon, Monsieur » avant que la conversation ne soit brusquement interrompue, explique une source au Monde, confirmant une information du Parisien. Sa disparition avait été signalée par sa femme, avec laquelle il ne vivait plus, trois jours plus tard.

A priori, le suspect ne connaissait aucune de ces deux victimes, les deux dernières à avoir été tuées. En raison des constatations réalisées sur les corps et de la proximité de leur découverte avec un lieu de rencontres gay, les enquêteurs le soupçonnent de les avoir tuées en raison de leur orientation sexuelle, réelle ou supposée, et l’ont abondamment questionné sur ses propres pratiques.

Aurait-il agi par pure homophobie, ou plutôt en raison de son homosexualité « honteuse », accompagnée d’un sentiment de culpabilité ? L’hypothèse d’un conflit intérieur entre son orientation sexuelle et sa pratique de l’islam fait en tout cas partie des pistes de travail. Elle a notamment été nourrie par les déclarations d’un de ses proches, placé en garde à vue le 21 août avant d’être libéré sans poursuite samedi soir, selon lesquelles le suspect s’était récemment découvert une nouvelle ferveur religieuse et reprochait à ses amis de ne pas prier suffisamment.

Un mobile trouble

Mais là où le mobile de ce possible tueur en série au profil inhabituel se trouble, c’est que ses deux premières victimes faisaient partie de ses « compagnons de galère », explique une source proche de l’enquête. Il s’agit de deux migrants précaires comme lui, qui fréquentaient régulièrement son squat. L’un, Abdellah M., un Algérien de 21 ans, n’avait plus donné signe de vie depuis le 26 juillet ; le second, Amir B., un Tunisien de 26 ans, depuis le 31 juillet.

A ce stade des investigations, la question de leur orientation sexuelle n’a pu être tranchée de manière certaine. Pourquoi le suspect aurait-il commencé par tuer ses deux compagnons d’infortune pour ensuite s’attaquer à deux inconnus ? A-t-il eu des rapports sexuels avec ses quatre victimes ? A-t-il tué ses deux amis pour des raisons crapuleuses, avant d’être pris d’une frénésie criminelle ?

Une chose est sûre : les éléments matériels qui le relient à chacune des quatre victimes sont accablants. L’ADN du Français de 48 ans a été retrouvée sur son pantalon, et le suspect a utilisé deux cartes SIM et une carte bancaire appartenant aux trois autres victimes juste après leur disparition. Le 1er août, la vidéosurveillance d’une boucherie a ainsi permis d’établir qu’il avait utilisé la carte bancaire de son ami Amir B., disparu la veille. Rarement, dans les annales judiciaires, aura-t-on eu affaire à un tueur en série aussi peu précautionneux.

Ce sont d’ailleurs ces erreurs grossières qui ont permis aux enquêteurs de l’identifier. Plusieurs éléments de preuve étaient même en leur possession avant la découverte des corps. Le 5 août, une semaine avant que les cadavres ne soient repêchés dans la Seine, le suspect avait en effet déjà été interpellé après la découverte, lors d’une opération de contrôle dans son squat, de cartes bancaires, de téléphones et de cartes SIM ne lui appartenant pas.

Recel de vol

Déjà connu de la justice pour un vol avec dégradation dans un véhicule commis en janvier, pour lequel il devait être jugé en septembre, le suspect avait été laissé libre à l’issue de ce contrôle de police du 5 août, et s’était vu remettre une convocation pour une ordonnance pénale pour recel de vol. A cette date, les policiers ignoraient que les deux téléphones retrouvés dans son squat appartenaient à la première victime, son ami Abdallah M., et à la troisième, le jeune Algérien de 21 ans tué la veille, dont la disparition n’avait pas été signalée.

Les éléments issus de cette première procédure, ainsi que l’exploitation de la vidéosurveillance et de la téléphonie ont conduit les enquêteurs à interpeller le suspect, le 20 août, une semaine après la découverte des corps, dans un centre de rétention administrative, où il avait entre-temps été placé en vue de son éloignement du territoire.

Confronté en garde à vue aux photos des quatre victimes, il a assuré n’en connaître aucune. Il a pourtant été établi qu’il se rendait régulièrement au centre Emmaüs de Choisy-le-Roi en compagnie de deux d’entre elles : Amir B., qui se serait installé dans son squat en février, et Abdellah M., avec lequel il apparaît sur des photos et des vidéos retrouvées dans le téléphone de ce dernier.

A l’issue de sa mise en examen, le suspect doit être présenté devant le juge des libertés et de la détention en vue de son placement en détention provisoire, requis par le parquet. Sollicité par Le Monde, son avocat, Antoine Ory, a simplement fait savoir que son client avait « fait usage de son droit au silence lors de sa garde à vue et devant le magistrat instructeur » et qu’il « s’expliquera ultérieurement lors de l’information judiciaire ».

The progress of advanced AI models seems to be decelerating after a period of rapid advancement and high expectations.

Many companies are hesitant to fully adopt AI due to concerns about data security and the reliability of AI-driven decisions.

Slower AI advancement might benefit companies by providing more time to integrate AI and adapt it to specific business needs.

The advance of cutting-edge AI is showing signs of slowing. For many companies looking to harness the technology, that wouldn’t be a terrible thing.

Excitement about AI reached feverish levels at the end of 2022 with the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and has stayed red-hot since. A regular cadence of more impressive large language models from startups and big tech companies alike has kept the party going, lifting stocks—including shares of AI-chip giant Nvidia NVDA 1.72%increase; green up pointing triangle—to lofty heights.

Nearly three years later, it looks increasingly as though those models are plateauing.

This summer, Meta Platforms META 2.12%increase; green up pointing triangle delayed the rollout of the next iteration of its flagship AI model, called Llama 4 Behemoth, because engineers were struggling to significantly improve it.

The latest model from OpenAI, called GPT-5, was delayed, and when it did come out it didn’t measure up to the hype. Normally ebullient Chief Executive Sam Altman has sounded more like an AI realist recently, saying at a media dinner that he thought investors had become overexcited about the technology.

But if the leading AI tools indeed are losing steam, that wouldn’t be a huge problem for many of the companies trying to integrate AI into how they work. It might even be welcome.

Generative AI is already powerful and useful in business—for summarizing large texts, for example, and helping employees code or write emails. Other more mundane forms of AI that predated the language-model explosion have also become increasingly useful, for tasks such as processing invoices or giving recommendations on how to manage a fleet of vehicles.

Yet most businesses have barely scratched the surface with AI in its current form, let alone what it could become if it gets a lot better.

While some have been quick to deploy AI, many more have been slow. Corporate tech leaders worry about sensitive data being leaked through chatbot conversations. They are wary of trusting AI with critical decisions that affect finances, employees and customers.

The tendency of even the best AI models to occasionally hallucinate wrong answers widens the trust gap.

A recent MIT study found that companies were already mostly comfortable with off-the-shelf generative AI tools from OpenAI and Microsoft MSFT 0.59%increase; green up pointing triangle. But when it came to building custom AI software to streamline their operations—the kind of things ostensibly most likely to produce real business returns—the failure rate for pilot projects was 95%.

Corporate AI users “were overwhelmingly skeptical of custom or vendor-pitched AI tools, describing them as brittle, overengineered, or misaligned with actual workflows,” the study’s authors said.

AI won’t stand still even if the purveyors of its most advanced models run into a wall: People will look for novel ways to improve it, and they will likely work eventually. Somewhat paradoxically, the mere perception that AI is slowing might give companies more confidence to invest time and money in it, seeing it as less of a moving target.

And the corporate world clearly does need more time to figure it out. The work of adapting large-language models to be useful for everyday tasks remains in its infancy.

“If I want to increase the pace at which I innovate, if I want to reduce the safety stock of inventory I have, if I want to improve the way I connect with millions of consumers, you have to change a lot more than just, ‘Here’s a tool that a few of your workers can use,’” said Michael Chui, a senior fellow at the AI arm of McKinsey & Co. “All of that change is really hard.”

That difficulty—a thorny management challenge as much as a technical one—means corporate AI adoption will be a multidecade effort, Chui says.

That shouldn’t be entirely surprising. The internet transformed how people live and do business, but it took much longer than its enthusiastic early boosters would have predicted in the 1990s. For instance, it took a decade for U.S. home broadband to go from near zero penetration in 2000 to more than 60% of adults’ subscribing to it, according to figures from the Pew Research Center.

The AI boom is different in many ways, but it could follow a similar trajectory: a burst of enthusiasm followed by a leveling-off as it bleeds into society and business, with the true scope of the benefits only clear years later.

In the shorter term, the sense that AI’s rise might be less meteoric than previously thought has sent tech stocks on a bumpy ride. Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Meta and other AI leaders sold off last week before Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s comments pointing to an interest-rate cut sparked a Friday rally.

Ironically, though, that it is getting tougher to squeeze out better performance from AI models might result in an extension of the boom for some, especially “pick and shovel” makers such as Nvidia. Altman, Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and other big AI spenders likely will put yet more money behind their attempts to overcome recent challenges.

Altman recently suggested the cure to OpenAI’s recent stumbles was to spend trillions more dollars on AI chips. And even the process of adapting models to real-world business tasks will require more incremental computing power.

Eventually, there is reason to suspect that the big winners from today’s AI boom won’t prosper quite as much, should the pace of AI innovation moderate.

But it isn’t just Big Tech that stands to gain from AI: The payday for all the companies starting to leverage it will come—it might just take longer.

There has been no soft landing for the formerly high-flying Phil Falcone.

Once a hedge-fund superstar worth $2 billion, bad investments have left him having to sell off his prized possessions to pay his bills: Upper East Side townhouses, a Hamptons mansion, a custom made grand piano, all gone.

Now he is in a legal tussle with a pawnbroker over millions of dollars of goods he and movie producer wife Lisa Maria Falcone put up as collateral, according to court records. It’s a long fall from grace from making a name as philanthropists and hosting movie stars.

But Falcone, who hauled in most of his cash betting huge against sub-prime mortgages like in movie “The Big Short,” remains optimistic about a comeback, even as others wager against him.

But first, he has to get his wife’s ring back. The pink-colored 20.45-carat diamond ring came from the elite jeweler Harry Winston and Falcone claims it is worth $6.3 million. It was one of the items pawned.

“I was prepared to buy the ring back. They sold the ring before the note was due,” the blustery Falcone claimed to The Post.

Told that the ring was sold at a foreclosure auction, Falcone claims it was a likely a set up.

“They probably sold it to one of their friends for pennies,” he added. The pawn company maintains he didn’t buy it back in time.

It’s quite a comedown for the cofounder of Harbinger Capital, which managed $26 billion at its peak.

The company’s undoing came amid SEC allegations Falcone improperly used $113 million of investor funds to pay his personal taxes. He denied this to The Post and said the money came from his own capital account.

At any rate, it resulted in an $18 million settlement and Falcone being barred from the securities industry for at least five years.

The investigation was also a harbinger of worse to come. An all-in investment ended badly, contributing to the company’s decimation and leaving Falcone to pawn some of his precious artworks to secure a loan for $92.5 million back in 2013.

Rarefied pieces including Richard Prince’s “Untitled (Cowboy),” Pablo Picasso’s “Deux Nus” and Damien Hirst’s “I love you, love buds” and “A Playful Bubblegum Kiss” were all used as guarantees.

Just one problem: It’s alleged in court papers the artwork was pledged for two different loans to two different lenders.

That’s led to a still-unresolved legal tangle between Falcone and lender BLCE. A judge ruled he should have known he couldn’t put the same asset up two different lenders, Falcone and his lawyer are appealing, contending the value of the art could have been shared by the two parties.

“These guys are professional lenders,” Falcone told The Post. “They entered into this with eyes wide open.”

Falcone insisted he is “not losing sleep over the ring and the art,” but it is the latest chapter in what appears to be an embarrassing third act in an up-from-nothing story that now includes the public liquidation of Falcone and his wife Lisa Maria’s valuable assets.

Last year, the Falcones sold a Sagaponack beachfront mansion for $14 million in an all-cash transaction. Their place in St. Barths went for $57 million. In 2019, he scored $77 million on the sale of a townhouse on 14-16 East 67th Street. Once the home of Bob Guccione, it benefited from a $10 million renovation carried out by the Falcones.

The luxe digs sported a dry-cleaning setup in the basement, a bar in one of Lisa’s walk-in closets and a heated sidewalk to keep snow from accumulating, possibly the best revenge for a guy who grew up in the frigid climes of Minnesota. At the time, it was the highest priced residential sale in New York City history.

Another Upper East Side townhouse of the Falcones went for $27 million, and all the furniture in the place was sold in what The Post dubbed “a fire sale.”

Among the top accoutrements: a custom white lacquer Steinway grand piano with a sterling silver frame (bought for $180,000 and sold for $50,000), a neoclassical artwork by Merry-Joseph Blondel and his partner Joseph Dufour went for $7,500 after being listed at $23,500 and a leather sofa (just $3,750).

In 2022, when he was called out for unloading the stuff, Falcone referenced an upcoming trial from which he hoped for a 10-figure settlement. “It’s a $5 billion lawsuit,” he told a Post reporter. “Do you think that’s worth nothing?”

Now he says, “It’s my money and these things are mine to sell.”

Other complaining creditors over the years have included a limousine company (the Wall Street Journal reported that he owed $34,000), a landlord and the law-firm that represented him in the SEC case, who all accuse Falcone of owing them money.

In 2021, the Journal reported that his one-time attorney won a $14 million judgment against him. In 2021, the attorney said Falcone has made “modest payments … as a result of our endlessly chasing him.”

Upon hearing this, Falcone said, “I’m still dealing with the lawyer, but the others have been settled. It’s been a rollercoaster.”

Once famous for owning a pot-bellied pig named Wilbur, hanging out with Alicia Keys and her husband Swizz Beatz and swanning it up at big-ticket fundraisers, Falcone and his wife hosted lavish parties where Madonna and Edward Norton would regularly attend.

Fast forward to a 2020 court appearance and Falcone was representing himself, claiming to be unable to afford a lawyer. He told the judge, “I’m behind on virtually every one of my bills. Including my kids’ tuition.”

When asked if he’s broke, Falcone shrugged it off and told The Post, “There’s a difference between liquidity and illiquidity.”

Still, headlines like “How to lose $2 billion in 10 years” do him no favors.

However, to lose $2 billion, you need to make it first. On his path to success, Philip Falcone lived the great story of the brainy New York arriviste.

Fresh out of Harvard and one season as a professional hockey player in Sweden, in 1985, he landed his first Wall Street job: trading junk bonds and earning $20,000 per year. In 1992, he met Lisa Marie Velasquez, a model. They fell in love, married in ‘97 and once shared a studio apartment with an air mattress on the floor.

Then he hit big with the his hedge fund, and hit it even bigger with the prescient and ongoing $15 billion wager that subprime mortgages would collapse.

When the sub-primes went to hell, he made money and made headlines. Lisa Marie became a big booster of the Metropolitan Opera and at an event for Friends of the High Line, she announced an apparently spontaneous $10 million donation.

Lisa Maria got involved in producing movies and bragged to W about “not making any money” from the productions. “Zero … Everyone knows I don’t have to work,”

Some of the movies, including “Mud” with Matthew McConaughey and the bio-drama “127 Hours,” starring James Franco, were profitable. Falcone, meanwhile, purchased the Minnesota Wild, an NHL team. That’s since gone the way of the fancy houses.

“That’s one thing I probably should have held onto,” he said with remorse. “When I sold it, it had a $300 million valuation. Now they’re saying it’s worth $1.6 billion. It was part of my selling assets to pay down debt. But, you know, it doesn’t mean I can’t do it again.”

Still, he remains upbeat and warns he may appear down, but he’s not out.

“People say I’ve fallen on hard times. I don’t even know what the hell that means. It’s not like I am having chemotherapy for God’s sake.

“I’m happy and thriving. I came from nothing. I lost a little bit of money. People say I am sitting on death’s door and I’m not. Not even close.”

WASHINGTON—The Pentagon has for months been blocking Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles to strike inside Russia, U.S. officials said, limiting Kyiv from employing a powerful weapon in its fight against Moscow’s invasion.

A high-level Defense Department approval procedure, which hasn’t been announced, has prevented Ukraine from firing any U.S.-made long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems, or Atacms, against targets in Russia since late spring, the officials said. On at least one occasion, Ukraine sought to use Atacms against a target on Russian territory but was rejected, two officials said.

The U.S. veto of long-range strikes has restricted Ukraine’s military operations as the White House has sought to woo the Kremlin into beginning peace talks.

Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for policy, developed the “review mechanism” to decide on Kyiv’s requests to fire long-range U.S.-made weapons as well as those provided to Ukraine by European allies that rely on American intelligence and components.

The review gives Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth final say over whether Ukraine can employ the Atacms, which have a range of nearly 190 miles, to strike Russia.

“President Trump has been very clear that the war in Ukraine needs to end. There has been no change in military posture in Russia-Ukraine at this time,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “Secretary Hegseth is working in lockstep with President Trump.”

The Pentagon and Ukrainian officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The Pentagon’s approval requirement has effectively reversed a decision by President Joe Biden in his final year in office to permit Ukraine to strike inside Russia with Atacms.

In a social-media post Thursday, Trump said Ukraine couldn’t defeat Russia unless it could “play offense” in the war, which has lasted longer than three years following Moscow’s invasion.

“It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking” the invading country, he wrote. “There is no chance of winning!”

U.S. officials said Trump’s statement didn’t signal a policy change that would dispense with the Pentagon’s review mechanism or encourage Ukraine’s use of Atacms and other long-range Western systems. But a senior White House official said Trump could change his mind about facilitating expanded offensive operations against Russia.

As president-elect, Trump said it was “stupid” of Biden to allow Ukraine to attack inside Russia. “We’re just escalating this war and making it worse,” he said in a December interview with Time.

U.S. Atacms and other long-range weapons, such as Britain’s Storm Shadow cruise missile, haven’t been game-changers for Ukraine. But they have enabled it to threaten Russian command-and-control headquarters and airfields far from the front lines, as Moscow presses its advantages in manpower, weaponry and resources.

The Pentagon review procedure also applies to Ukraine’s use of the Storm Shadow as it relies on U.S. targeting data, according to two U.S. officials and a British official. The U.K. government declined to comment.

Trump has threatened to increase sanctions on the Kremlin and tariffs on its major trading partners unless Moscow agrees to a cease-fire. But a decision on that has been deferred following his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which the Kremlin chief convinced Trump he was serious about making peace.

Trump vowed in July to provide Kyiv with new weapons as long as Europe agreed to pay for them, a decision that came after a brief pause in U.S. arms shipments while the Pentagon examined whether there were shortfalls in its own stockpiles. Trump told reporters that month that “we’re not looking” to provide longer-range weapons to target Moscow.

While the U.S. hasn’t announced any plans to provide more of the missiles, other types of weapons that European governments are buying from the U.S. could help Ukraine within its own borders. They include air-defense systems and the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, which has a 90-mile range.

The administration this past week approved the sale of 3,350 Extended Range Attack Munition air-launched missiles, or ERAMs, which are set to arrive in Ukraine in about six weeks, two U.S. officials said. The $850 million arms package, mostly funded by European nations and which includes other items, was delayed until after Trump’s summits with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Several U.S. officials said use of the ERAM, with a range between 150-280 miles, would require Ukraine to seek approval from the Pentagon. The State Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The Biden administration provided hundreds of Atacms to Ukraine starting in 2023. The restrictions on Atacms attacks inside Russia initially imposed under Biden were removed in the fall of 2024 after North Korean troops entered the war alongside Russia.

The last of the Atacms authorized to be sent to Ukraine by the Biden administration arrived during the spring, and Kyiv has a small supply left, according to U.S. officials.

Ukraine has developed some of its own long-range weapons to strike targets inside Russia, specifically drones that it has used to strike Russian oil refineries and aircraft.

Zelensky said recently that his country was developing a new cruise missile—the Flamingo—that could be produced in significant quantities by the end of this year or early next year.

“Drones are great for certain things, but they have their own vulnerabilities too,” said James Townsend, who was the top Pentagon official for North Atlantic Treaty Organization issues during the Obama administration, about the restrictions on use of Atacms. “You don’t want to limit the Ukrainian ability to put pressure on the Russians.”

In addition to requiring approval for missile attacks, Colby, the Pentagon’s third-ranking official who has long been concerned about husbanding Pentagon resources to deter China, tightened control over additional munitions for Ukraine. In a June memo he established three categories—green, yellow and red—for assessing whether U.S. stockpiles of weapons were adequate to allow some to be shared with Kyiv.

The green category consisted of systems that the U.S. had in abundance and that could readily be provided to Ukraine, while yellow and red systems are in shorter supply. It gave Hegseth authority to reclaim weapon systems earmarked for Ukraine that fell in the yellow and red categories.

Russia Covets This Ukraine Province Above All. These Maps and Charts Show Why.

Putin wants to win territory in peace talks that he hasn’t managed to seize militarily

Peace talks with President Trump have prompted international discussions around a key aim that has eluded Russia’s Vladimir Putin in more than a decade of war: full control of Ukraine’s industrial eastern province of Donetsk.

The Kremlin leader thinks he can make a hugely significant strategic gain at the negotiating table rather than on the battlefield, where it could take years and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Taking the territory would make further advances easier by bypassing Ukraine’s main defensive line.

These five maps and charts show why Putin is eager to get his hands on the land.

Russia has failed to fully take any of the four provinces in southeastern Ukraine that it has sought to annex. While Russian forces control almost all of the easternmost Luhansk region, they still don’t hold around a quarter of the other three regions. U.K. military intelligence estimates that seizing all of them would take Russian forces a further 4.4 years of fighting and cost around 2 million casualties in killed and wounded troops—a cost Putin would like to avoid with talks.

If Ukraine were to hand over the rest of the Donetsk region to Russia, it would move the front line of the war beyond the fortified cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk that have served as military hubs for Ukraine since 2014. West of Donetsk, the land is much flatter, opening up a swath of territory on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River that the Kremlin could try to make a grab for by resuming its invasion.

Russia has been advancing in eastern Ukraine for months, but the rate of progress has been glacial. Ukraine has successfully slowed down the Russian advance primarily using explosive drones to eliminate vehicles and infantry soldiers. As a result, Russia has been unable to make a breakthrough, and its advance in some areas, such as around the eastern city of Kupyansk, has been slower than the British and French advance at the Battle of the Somme in World War I.

Russia’s wasteful style of warfare, which commits infantry troops to risky assaults in search of incremental advances, has caused heavy losses. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, has estimated that as many as a quarter of a million Russian soldiers have been killed in 3½ years of war. The Kremlin has had to offer huge bonuses to attract volunteers to bolster its army. Ukraine’s losses have been smaller, but its population is also much smaller, around a quarter of Russia’s, meaning it is also struggling for manpower.

Who owns the copyright for AI work?

The US may not think prompts warrant authorship but China disagrees

Generative artificial intelligence poses two copyright puzzles. The first is the widely discussed question of compensation for work used to train AI models. The second, which has yet to receive as much attention, concerns the work that AI produces. Copyright is granted to authors. So what happens to work that has no human author? 

The US has drawn the clearest line in the sand to date. In 2023 the US Copyright Office granted copyright protection to the graphic novel Zarya of the Dawn but rescinded protection for any AI-generated images — protecting only the human-authored text and arrangement. More definitively, a federal appeals court ruled in March that the pretty, purple and green AI-generated artwork “A Recent Entrance to Paradise” could not receive copyright protection because works must be “authored in the first instance by a human being”. The message is unambiguous: AI prompts, however sophisticated, are not enough alone to warrant authorship. 

China has taken the opposite path. In 2023, the Beijing Internet Court ruled that AI-generated images could receive copyright protection, finding that a user’s intellectual investment in selecting prompts and refining outputs constituted human creativity. 

So far, the UK and Ireland occupy a curious middle ground. Both jurisdictions provide copyright protection for “computer-generated works”. But this protection may be on shaky ground. A consultation from the UK government last year asked whether it should be removed. Ireland’s AI Advisory Council has made a similar recommendation.

Global divergence in legal frameworks can create problems for businesses. The same AI-generated content could be legally protected intellectual property in Beijing while residing in the public domain in Boston. That means an AI-generated jingle or AI-generated marketing copy made in the US could, in theory, be used by anyone.

This issue doesn’t just affect writers, graphic artists and composers who use AI for their work. If your business is creating software, you could be even more exposed. In the US and other jurisdictions, any individual lines of code generated by AI would not be protected even if the software product as a whole was. This has the potential to impact corporate transactions where deals pivot on what a company actually owns.  

Contracts with employees and external contractors fall under the same category. Most such documents have provisions noting that any copyright material generated by an employee or contractor is assigned to the company. But you cannot assign something that does not yet exist.

It is unrealistic to stipulate that employees and contractors cannot use new technology like AI. Such a request would be as archaic as asking them to submit handwritten work.

Lawyers need to find alternative solutions. If AI-generated code is not protected by copyright, for example, then new contracts need to be drawn up that treat it as a trade secret. 

The Irish AI Advisory Council on which I sit has gone further — recommending that the government introduce a limited form of IP protection for certain AI-generated works. However, this has been met with pushback from the creative sector. It will be difficult for one country to implement such a policy alone.

Victorian-era copyright rules are breaking under the weight of machines that can compose, code and create at scale. Litigation against AI companies from the likes of Getty Images and The New York Times centre on exploitation of existing works. So far the ownership of AI-created content has remained largely untested before the courts. But that could soon change.

AI is reshaping authorship. Surviving the transition requires rewriting contracts, restructuring IP strategies and building protection through trade secrets and confidentiality. Relying on copyright protection that may no longer exist is not enough.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei strikes defiant note and accuses Washington of seeking Iranian surrender

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ruled out direct negotiations with the US, accusing Washington of seeking an Iranian surrender.

In his first full public appearance since the 12-day war with Israel in June, Khamenei addressed thousands of people on Sunday, according to local media, after weeks of issuing only brief video messages and making limited ceremonial appearances.

His absence — following Israeli threats to assassinate him — had raised concerns over the stability of the Islamic republic’s leadership, amid growing domestic pressure on the regime to change course and pursue a rapprochement with Washington.

“This person who is currently in charge in the US revealed the essence of their hostility towards Iran — essentially, that they want the Iranian nation and the Islamic republic to surrender,” Khamenei said, without naming US President Donald Trump.

Khamenei criticised Iranian politicians advocating direct negotiations with Washington as “superficial”, insisting that “the Iranian nation will stand firmly against such [US] demands”.

Iran’s foreign minister said last month he had been in touch with US envoy Steve Witkoff, who had proposed resuming talks.

The remarks come at a critical time as reformist voices within Iran increasingly push for a diplomatic reset with the US, including the suspension of Iran’s uranium enrichment and a return to negotiations aimed at de-escalating tensions and ending decades of hostility.

Pro-reform politicians such as political prisoner Mostafa Tajzadeh have argued that engagement could usher in vital economic and political reforms.

Hardline factions, however, have responded sharply, particularly in parliament and during Friday prayer sermons.

Some have even suggested that reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, elected last year, should be removed.

But Khamenei backed Pezeshkian, warning against internal strife.

“The people should support those who serve the nation, especially the president, who is hardworking and persistent,” he said, in a clear rebuke to hardliners calling for Pezeshkian’s ousting.

Public anxiety remains high following the June war with Israel, which claimed more than 1,000 civilian lives and resulted in the deaths of dozens of senior Iranian military commanders and nuclear scientists. The US joined Israel in bombing Iranian nuclear sites during the conflict.

Although open hostilities have ceased, no formal ceasefire has been reached, and fears persist of renewed conflict. Ongoing reports of fires across the country have further fuelled public concern that a shadow war remains under way, a claim that authorities deny.

Despite mounting pressure, Tehran has shown no intention of curbing its nuclear programme.

On Friday, the E3 — Britain, France and Germany — held telephone talks with Iran’s foreign minister as they reviewed the possibility of invoking a sanctions “snapback” mechanism ahead of the October 18 deadline.

This mechanism, envisaged in the 2015 deal over Iran’s nuclear programme, enables UN sanctions to be reimposed if Iran is found to be failing to comply with the agreement on curbing its nuclear activities.

October 18 is the last date on which the mechanism could be used, but in order to do so, the E3 would need to begin the process weeks beforehand.

The US unilaterally withdrew from the deal in 2018, and Iran claims the agreement is already void because the E3 failed to fulfil commitments to help lift sanctions in exchange for Tehran rolling back most of its nuclear activities.

Tehran has dismissed the E3’s threat and has so far shown no willingness to resume negotiations with the US or restart its co-operation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been suspended since the June war.

Ali Larijani, the newly appointed secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, told domestic media on Friday that Iran would not accept an extension to the current snapback deadline, even if the E3 was considering extending the date as a temporary solution should Iran resume negotiations with the US.

“If we agree today, in six months we will be asked to do the same again. This is not sustainable,” he said.