TheChek News Flow

European Commission plans additional checks and stricter rules to shore up ailing industry

The EU is preparing checks on imported plastics and other measures to shore up its recycling industry, after a wave of plant closures driven by sluggish demand and cheap imports, including from China.

Proposals, expected as soon as Tuesday, include checks on imports to ensure they are recycled, moves towards a single market for waste and clearer rules for chemical recycling.

Jessika Roswall, EU environment commissioner, told the Financial Times the industry was in “deep crisis”, adding: “It’s important to make some changes now.”

She said 10 plants had closed in the Netherlands alone over the past 18 months. Across the bloc, about 1mn tonnes of recycling capacity had shut in the same period — the equivalent of France’s annual output.

The EU plans to step up monitoring of imports and introduce a new customs code to distinguish recycled plastic from new material.

“We need to have a level playing field because today there is this sense that not all recycled plastic that is coming into Europe is really recycled: It could be virgin. We lack the information,” Roswall said.

“There is an overflow of plastic coming in from third countries,” she added.

Imports from China continue despite EU anti-dumping duties imposed in 2024. 

The commission will also ask the 27 member states to approve a single criterion for when recycled material changes from waste to fresh material. That would make it easier to ship plastic across borders to increase the efficiency of the industry.

“We need to have one single market for waste. We need to see waste as a resource not trash — how do we turn trash to cash?” Roswall said. 

The move is partly a response to a letter from six member states, including the Netherlands and France, in November.

“Several European producers which have invested in the sector’s shift towards circularity and plastic recyclers have been forced to reduce production or close factories,” the letter said. It demanded greater incentives to use recycled content and protection from imports. 

Roswall said: “We need to see that we get the business case of the recyclers. Today it is sometimes cheaper to buy virgin materials, and that is not sustainable.”

Installed plastics recycling capacity in the EU reached 13.2mn tonnes in 2023 but is forecast to fall by 1mn tonnes by 2025, according to the Commission.

The plan also seeks to address regulatory barriers that have held back chemical recycling.

Companies were asking whether the technology will be allowed, Roswall said. “Yes we will use chemical recycling and that means that ‘yes, you can invest in this because we see that it is a part of the industry for the future’.”

For the first time, chemically recycled plastic will be allowed to count towards a target requiring 25 per cent recycled content in PET drinks bottles this year. Officials say the target has been met, but it will rise to 30 per cent from 2030.

US strategy could be costly in terms of higher electricity prices, increased water stress and potential food insecurity

“The United States is in a race to achieve global dominance in artificial intelligence.” These are the opening words of the White House’s AI action plan that is based on accelerating innovation, building AI infrastructure and leading in international diplomacy and security.

For the Trump administration, winning in AI is clearly at the heart of the battle for the 21st century and keeping the US as one of the leading (and richest) global economies. It is key to offsetting the productivity drag from worsening demographics. US trend productivity has slowed from a rise of more than 2.5 per cent a year in the 1960s, to about 1.5 per cent a year in the past 20 years. And US demographics will probably put further downward pressure on productivity, without labour-enhancing technological change.

As Yale associate professor Michael Peters argues in an article for the IMF, America must rediscover its dynamism if it is to maintain its global standing. This is why an explicit part of the US AI plan is to invent and embrace productivity-enhancing AI uses that the world wants to emulate. My company’s own analysis suggests that AI has already raised US labour productivity by 0.1 to 0.9 percentage points and might eventually raise global productivity growth by about a half point annually over the coming decade.

However, increasingly, the key limit to the US leading the AI arms race is less technological and more the physical limits that AI places on US energy demand.

The International Energy Agency estimates that global data centre electricity demand will more than double, from 460 terawatt hours of electricity in 2024 to more than 1,000TWh by 2030 and will reach 1,300TWh by 2035. In the US, it expects data centres will account “for nearly half of electricity demand growth between now and 2030”.

But it is not just the scale of the energy demand needed for US AI that is the issue. It is also the role hydrocarbons play in fuelling this growth. The IEA expects more than half the electricity powering US data centres to still come from fossil fuels, notably natural gas, until after 2030. But even by 2035, the IEA forecasts more than 40 per cent of US AI energy being hydrocarbon-based due, in part, to the Trump administration’s cancellations of support for renewable energy initiatives.

While China also relies on hydrocarbons (mainly coal) to power its data centres, it is looking to change this mix. Its strategy is focused on developing computing resources close to coastal renewable power sources. The IEA estimates that, unlike the US, China will see the level, as well as the share, of data-centre electricity generation coming from hydrocarbons falling after 2030.

One strategic risk from this US AI reliance on hydrocarbons is relative costs. US average electricity prices have already risen 38 per cent since 2020 with these cost increases often linked to rising AI data centre demands. These cost pressures are only likely to rise. In contrast, the cost curves for renewables continue to come down faster than for fossil fuels, potentially disadvantaging US AI vs Chinese AI in the longer run.

However, the bigger strategic challenge for US hydrocarbon-powered AI may not only be price, but also its physical impact on the economy. Energy, water and food production are intimately linked. The increased US energy needs for AI, when powered by hydrocarbons, will lead to more US water demand and stress than if AI growth were powered by renewables.

To make matters worse, two-thirds of the new US data centres built, or planned, since 2022 have been located in places of elevated water stress, according to Bloomberg analysis. As a result, the risks to longer-term US food security from hydrocarbon-powered AI could be a major constraint.

As the US “bets the farm” on using hydrocarbons to power a rapid data centre build-out, China is relying on a slower process, using a more sustainable energy mix.

Thus, the US strategy could be costly, not only in terms of higher electricity prices, potentially limiting the return on investments in AI, but also increased water stress and potential food insecurity. In exchange for these increased strategic risks, society will probably demand real, tangible benefits — a modestly faster search engine will seem a poor trade-off. The bigger strategic risk is that while the US may win the initial AI battle, it might end up losing the war due to its reliance on hydrocarbon energy.

The Takeaway

Pill Version of Wegovy Is Approved for Use in the U.S.

Novo Nordisk’s tablet is the first GLP-1 drug that can be swallowed for weight loss

U.S. regulators approved the first GLP-1 weight-loss pill—a tablet formulation of Novo Nordisk’s NOVO.B -2.10%decrease; red down pointing triangle Ozempic and Wegovy—ushering in a new era of the obesity-drugs revolution that is expected to broaden their use.

Novo Nordisk said Monday it plans to start selling the new pill in the U.S. in early January, with a cash price of $149 a month for the starting dose.

The Food and Drug Administration approval is a milestone because weekly shots such as Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s LLY 0.47%increase; green up pointing triangle Zepbound have dominated the anti-obesity market to date. Yet many people with excess weight don’t take the shots due to cost, spotty insurance coverage and fear of needles.

Drug companies and analysts say pills will tap in to demand from people who don’t want an injection or would prefer the cadence of a daily dose. Pills also offer the prospect of lower prices and better health-insurance coverage than injections, because pills cost less to make.

Eli Lilly also plans to introduce a new weight-loss pill, potentially within weeks or months.

“We now have injectable-like efficacy in a once-daily pill,” said David Moore, executive vice president of Novo Nordisk’s U.S. operations. “And that’s a change from where we’ve been in terms of treating obesity.

The FDA also approved the Wegovy pill to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes in people with established cardiovascular disease, a use already approved for the Wegovy shot.

Leerink Partners analyst David Risinger estimates that pills will eventually make up about 25% of the projected $150 billion total obesity-drug market.

For Novo Nordisk, the new drug approval is a chance for the company to turn things around following a difficult year. It lost its lead in the obesity-drug market to Eli Lilly, and some investors think Lilly’s pipeline of potential new weight-loss drugs has bigger market potential than Novo Nordisk’s.

The challenges led to the ouster of Novo Nordisk’s chief executive and a shake-up of its board of directors. Novo Nordisk also recently lost out to Pfizer in a bidding war to acquire an obesity-drug startup, Metsera.

Novo Nordisk’s new drug, which the company plans to call Wegovy pill, has the main ingredient semaglutide, which is the same ingredient in its injected diabetes drug Ozempic and weight-loss drug Wegovy. Novo Nordisk has been selling a pill formulation of semaglutide, Rybelsus, that is approved specifically for Type 2 diabetes and not weight loss.

Semaglutide is a GLP-1 drug, which works by mimicking a gut hormone to reduce appetite, make people feel full sooner when eating and slow the rate of food leaving the stomach for the intestine.

In a study of 205 people with excess weight, those taking Novo Nordisk’s pill for 64 weeks lost an average of 16.6% of their body weight.

The Wegovy pill could generate sales of nearly $2 billion in 2030, TD Cowen analysts estimate.

Eli Lilly’s GLP-1 pill is called orforglipron, and in a study of 3,127 patients its highest dose helped people lose an average of 12.4% of body weight at 72 weeks.

Both drugs can cause side effects including gastrointestinal disorders such as nausea.

Lilly has said it would submit its pill for regulatory approval by the end of 2025. It is seeking an expedited FDA review that could result in approval in early 2026.

Lilly plans to charge $149 a month for the lowest starting dose of its pill, well below the $1,086 list price of Zepbound weight-loss treatment. TD Cowen analysts estimate orforglipron will generate sales of about $5.6 billion in 2030.

Lilly’s pill has no restrictions on how patients take it, whereas people are supposed to take Novo Nordisk’s pill on an empty stomach in the morning and then wait a half-hour before eating.

Novo Nordisk’s Moore said the restriction on waiting to eat hasn’t been an impediment to people taking Rybelsus, the pill for diabetes with the same main ingredient.

The president said he wants companies to instead spend on new plants

President Trump said Monday he wants to pressure America’s largest defense contractors to speed up weapons production by investing in new facilities and ending the practice of repurchasing stocks.

“They want to buy back their stock—I don’t want them to buy back their stock,” Trump said, adding that he would make his case to top defense executives in Florida next week. “I want them to put the money in plants and equipment so they can build these planes fast.”

Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach on Monday after announcing a new class of Navy battleships that will bear his name, Trump also criticized the high pay of executives at defense firms.

“We’ll be discussing the pay to executives, where they’re making $45 and $50 million a year and not being able to build quickly,” Trump said. “They’re going to make that kind of money, they have to build quickly.”

By repurchasing their own stock, companies reduce the number of publicly available shares, driving up the earnings per share as a way to increase their stock price and return money to shareholders. Critics of the practice say companies should instead invest that money back into facilities, workers and other areas to improve the company.

Trump expressed frustration that allies have to wait years to purchase new weapons, including the F-35 stealth fighter, which is manufactured by Lockheed Martin.

“We have many people [who] want the F-35 fighter jet, and it takes too long to deliver them to allies or to ourselves,” Trump said. “The only way they’re going to be able to deliver them is if they build new plants. They don’t want to build new plants because it’s expensive.”

Trump’s comments come as the Pentagon is in tense conversations with Lockheed Martin and RTX over the investments in new factory space and machinery needed to surge missile production rates, an issue that has been front and center amid large U.S. weapon transfers to Ukraine. The military still lacks the multiyear funding to fully meet its production targets, prompting some officials to ask defense contractors to add more capacity on spec ahead of actual orders.

Over the past week, rumors of an executive order banning stock repurchases and targeting executive compensation have spread throughout the defense sector.

“This seems to be an overreach, and, in our view, the contractors don’t need to be regulated given contract structure and clearer demand signals self-regulate investments,” analysts from investment bank Jefferies’ wrote in a note to investors last week amid reports that an executive order was in the works.

Officials from both political parties have criticized companies that buy back shares after collecting massive federal contracts. The Biden administration’s 2022 Chips Act limited grant recipients’ ability to repurchase shares, and several Democratic lawmakers have targeted defense contractors for what they call war profiteering.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), who has long pushed to limit companies from repurchasing stocks and giving their executives high salaries, last week offered to work with the Trump administration on this issue.

“Contractors should be prioritizing investments in research, development, and their workforce to help strengthen America’s innovation. Shortfalls in defense contractors’ workforce increase delays and spending for DoD,” Warren wrote with Rep. Chris Deluzio (D., Pa.) in a Dec. 16 letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

A ban on buybacks could push investors away from publicly traded companies and toward venture-backed tech startups, said Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory.

“What it will affect is investor sentiment against legacy companies, which typically use buybacks and dividends to attract investors,” Aboulafia said.

Xinhua hails ‘breakthrough in China’s large drone technology’, says Jiu Tian could also be deployed in wide range of civilian applications

China’s massive aerial drone carrier the Jiu Tian has completed its first flight, adding to the potential swarming capacities of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

The Jiu Tian, which is itself a large drone, took to the air for the first time in the northwestern province of Shaanxi, state news agency Xinhua said on Thursday. The report did not mention when this took place.

Designed by the First Aircraft Institute of the state-owned aerospace giant Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), the carrier drone “leverages independent, integrated technological innovation to deliver core advantages, including heavy payload capacity, high service ceiling, wide speed range and short take-off and landing capabilities”, according to Xinhua.

The flight signified a “breakthrough in China’s large drone technology”, the report said.

The Jiu Tian made its debut at China’s premier Zhuhai air show in November last year. It can reportedly carry up to 100 loitering munitions or small drones, including kamikaze unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). These can be deployed from both sides of the aircraft’s fuselage, extending its operational range.

It can also carry a range of payloads on eight hardpoints and is capable of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assignments, as well as electronic warfare.

Chinese military commentator and former PLA instructor Song Zhongping said this feature confirmed that the military-civilian dual-use aircraft would be a “drone carrier”, enabling it to execute “swarm attacks” that an adversary’s air defence system would be “unable to defend against”.

He said the Jiu Tian’s “saturation strike capability” would be key to breaching defences, enabling it to “counter enemy air defence interceptions through numerical superiority, and achieve denser penetration of specific targets”.

Song added that, with its flight ceiling reaching 15,000 metres (49,200 feet), the Jiu Tian could attack ground and maritime targets “from high to low, from fast to slow” – a capability he described as “unique globally and highly forward-looking”.

The Jiu Tian measures 16.35 metres in length and has a wingspan of 25 metres, according to Xinhua. With a maximum take-off weight of 16 tonnes and a payload capacity of 6,000kg (13,220lbs), it can stay airborne for 12 hours and has a ferry range of 7,000km (4,350 miles), performance figures the report described as “ranking among the best in its class”.

The drone could be deployed across diverse “civilian applications,” Xinhua said. This includes delivering heavy cargo and precision logistics “to remote mountainous regions and islands” as well as for “rapidly restoring communications and deploying disaster relief equipment during emergency rescue operations”. It can also perform geographic surveys, disaster assessment and mineral exploration.

Beijing is investing substantial resources in developing various types of drones, which are seen as playing a critical role in modern warfare and asymmetric combat – a capability already shown on the battlefield in Ukraine.

Drone operations are seen as pivotal in potential regional conflicts, including those in the Taiwan Strait.

The Jiu Tian adds to China’s stock of advanced drone technology, such as the stealth combat CH-7 and the medium-altitude anti-submarine Wing Loong-X. Some see it as a potential rival to the two dominant American drone models: the RQ-4 Global Hawk and the MQ-9 Reaper.

The Global Hawk can conduct advanced reconnaissance missions at altitudes of up to 18,000 metres and its maximum take-off weight is comparable to that of the Jiu Tian, although it lacks strike capabilities. The Reaper UAV is a medium-altitude, multipurpose aircraft with a maximum take-off weight of around 5 tonnes and designed for designed for multiple roles including reconnaissance and strike missions.

Telegram founder Pavel Durov will cover IVF costs for women who want to use his donated sperm, and has promised his offspring a share of his fortune

Attractive women started showing up in summer 2024 at a fertility clinic in southern Moscow in response to an unusual marketing campaign: free sperm.

The sperm belonged to Pavel Durov, billionaire founder of the messaging app Telegram.

At conferences, on social media and on news sites, the clinic described Durov as having “high genetic compatibility” and noted he would pay for in vitro fertilization for women under 37 who wanted to use his “in-demand” sperm.

A banner on the website of the clinic, called AltraVita, still advertises his “biomaterial” next to a photo of the CEO and a Telegram logo.

“The patients who came, they all looked great, were well-educated and very healthy,” said a former doctor at the clinic, who examined several volunteers, adding that participants had to be unmarried to avoid legal complications. “They wanted to have a child from, well, a certain kind of man. They saw that kind of father figure as the right one.”

The effort adds to a biological lineage that Durov, now 41 and based in Dubai, said in a public post on Telegram spans at least 100 children in at least 12 countries—not counting the six other children he conceived with three different mothers.

The Russian-born CEO said in his post in July 2024 that he started donating sperm sometime around 2010. At first, he gave to a friend trying to conceive a child, and then anonymously, to alleviate a shortage of “high-quality donor material.”

Although he had stopped donating years ago, he wrote, his frozen sperm was still available at the AltraVita clinic.

This past summer, Durov sweetened the deal during an interview with a French magazine, announcing that his biological children would receive an equal share of his inheritance.

Forbes pegs his net worth at $17 billion, though the bulk of that is based on the value of Telegram, which he said he plans to leave to a nonprofit foundation. Durov also owns an unspecified amount of bitcoin he says he bought in 2013. The declaration triggered a flood of messages from people claiming to be his offspring, Durov has said.

“As long as they can establish their shared DNA with me, someday maybe in 30 years from now, they will be entitled to a share of my estate after I’m gone,” Durov said on the Lex Fridman podcast in October. Durov has said he plans to open source his DNA so that his biological children can find each other.

Durov joins a small group of some of the wealthiest, most influential people on the planet pushing the boundaries of reproductive ethics and technology. Some are using genetic testing and exploring gene splicing to produce children with desired traits. Others, such as Elon Musk, talk about producing children as both necessary to offset declining population growth and a flex to colonize the galaxy with one’s descendants.

Durov has framed his sperm donations as an effort to help alleviate a shortage of healthy sperm and to incentivize other men to do the same. In the background is a broader worldview that at least some of Western civilization is in decline. Durov has often written about threats to freedom and privacy posed by tech regulations in Europe and elsewhere.

“A dark, dystopian world is approaching fast—while we’re asleep,” Durov posted about measures such as digital IDs and online age checks, as well as arrests over speech in social-media posts, in October. “We’ve set ourselves on a path toward self-destruction—moral, intellectual, economic, and ultimately biological.”

Durov’s post last year that he had conceived more than 100 children drew a joking response from Musk, who himself has fathered at least 14 known children.

“‘Rookie numbers lmao’—Genghis Khan,” Musk wrote on X, obliquely referencing research that suggests some 16 million people globally may now be descended from the 13th-century warlord.

“brb, increasing unit limit,” Durov responded to Musk’s post, including a gaming meme from the classic space colonization game “StarCraft” with the quote, “SPAWN MORE OVERLORDS.”

The clinic

The chief marketer of Durov’s sperm is Moscow-based AltraVita, a private fertility clinic catering to wealthy Russians and international customers. The clinic says in promotional materials that it offers “selective” embryos screened for genetic disease.

It was founded by genetics and fertility specialist Sergey Yakovenko, who described himself in an interview with a Russian publication as Durov’s longtime friend. Yakovenko didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Durov “does not have any financial, managerial, or operational involvement with the clinic, nor does he follow its activities in any systematic way,” said Devon Spurgeon, a spokeswoman for Durov.

He remains in contact with the clinic’s director through “personal text exchanges once or twice a year, often on matters entirely unrelated to the clinic,” she added.

Yakovenko has also published papers on human cloning, and AltraVita was involved in a Russian effort that claimed in October to have successfully cloned a “record-breaking cow renowned for her exceptional milk yield” in southwestern Russia. The project was led by Altragen, a cloning company Yakovenko co-owns with an agricultural company.

Both AltraVita and Altragen “intend to further develop this area, attracting the attention of both the scientific community and the general public to the prospects of cloning and its possibilities,” AltraVita says on its Russian-language website.

AltraVita initially agreed to answer questions about the Durov-funded donation program, but later canceled the interview, saying Durov had directed the clinic to decline.

Durov said on Telegram last year that he was initially skeptical about sperm donation, but Yakovenko convinced him that it was his civic duty to give—both because of his good genes and because of a long-term trend of declining sperm counts and male infertility.

The program has gained particular resonance in Russia, which faces a persistent demographic crisis compounded by emigration and the war.

“The shortage of healthy sperm has become an increasingly serious issue worldwide, and I’m proud that I did my part to help alleviate it,” Durov wrote in the 2024 post on Telegram.

In his interview with the French magazine earlier this year, he attributed a “rapid drop in sperm concentration in men in many regions of the world” in part to plastic pollution, calling it a threat “to our survival.”

AltraVita advertises the option for clients to do genetic testing of their embryos and see their sex.

Durov wasn’t involved in the selection or medical testing of potential mothers, which involves the same battery of exams as the clinic uses for normal IVF patients, the former AltraVita doctor said.

“Suddenly here’s a chance: It’s paid for, and the donor is someone so successful, intelligent and handsome,” the doctor said.

Anna Panina, a 35-year-old from Moscow, said that she has considered participating in the program.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity to become the mother of a beautiful and intelligent human being,” she said.

The billionaire

Born in 1984 to educators in what was then Leningrad, Durov has long been fascinated with language and history. He first rose to fame in 2006 for creating VK, a Facebook clone that earned him the moniker of Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg. He founded Telegram in 2013, shortly before he was pushed out of VK.

Durov, who almost always wears black—except when posing for shirtless photos with six-pack abs—espouses a libertarian view of the world, rejecting alignment with states and centralized power. He has long painted his app as a means of resistance to authoritarianism, both in Russia and the West.

For years he funded it himself and through borrowing, but the app has since become profitable, with more than 1 billion monthly active users. The company told potential buyers in a bond issue that it generated more than $500 million in profit last year, according to documents seen by The Wall Street Journal.

Largely uncensored, Telegram positions itself as a neutral ground in conflicts like the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The app has also been criticized as a hotbed of extremist propaganda. The company says it blocked more than 42 million groups and channels that violated its terms so far this year. And it has turned over internet-address data in some terrorism and criminal cases, law-enforcement officials say.

Durov was in headlines again last year when he was arrested in France and hit with preliminary charges of illegal activity on Telegram, such as drug trafficking or child pornography, and refusing to cooperate with police.

Durov denies the charges and says French police were using the wrong email address when seeking help with criminal cases. The French investigation is ongoing, and prosecutors have said that Telegram’s cooperation has improved.

In his personal life, Durov pursues a health-conscious lifestyle, eschewing alcohol and caffeine, and promoting exercise and long nights’ sleep.

Durov fathered his first two children with a girlfriend while still running VK, in 2009 and 2010. It was sometime around then that Durov said he started donating sperm to AltraVita.

He then fathered three children, who were born in Russia between 2013 and 2017, with Irina Bolgar, a lawyer who now lives in Switzerland.

They are now in a dispute. Bolgar said that she had a relationship with Durov for a decade. Then things soured, she said, and by 2023 Durov cut off all financial support to her and her children, including terminating the lease on what had been their Geneva home, after she refused to move her children to Dubai, she said. That year, Bolgar also filed a criminal complaint in Switzerland against Durov that alleges he hit the youngest of their children on five occasions. She declined to comment on the criminal complaint.

Spurgeon, the Durov spokeswoman, said that the allegations in the complaint never occurred and were made as part of a “contentious custody dispute” initiated by “a person seeking to extract money” from her client. She added that Bolgar and Durov were never a couple and that Durov “provides financial support to all his children,” including a $7 million prepayment of child support to Bolgar in 2019—which Bolgar contends had been a personal gift to her.

Bolgar has posted on Instagram about Durov’s pride in alleviating the shortage of healthy sperm.

“In other words, his mission is to spread his sperm across the world,” she wrote.

After Durov went public last year with his sperm donation, Russian news outlets found and published a profile from an unnamed Moscow sperm clinic for “Donor No. 6” that matched his description. The profile listed the donor as a brown-haired, brown-eyed Russian programmer and entrepreneur who studied multiple languages. The profile describes his character traits as “hardworking, goal-oriented, decisive, true to his principles, lover of freedom.”

The profile also included a Russian-language philosophical quote that Durov had posted to his VK page in 2012: “A person cannot become truly free while existing in the dead-end ‘slave-master’ paradigm. In this system, every master is someone else’s slave, and every slave is someone else’s master.”

On AltraVita’s website, the banner advertisement for Durov’s sperm now displays his photo in front of the text, “your number six.”

After he revealed his more than 100 offspring in 2024, AltraVita also started a marketing push naming him.

Durov relocated Telegram to Dubai in 2017, citing its political neutrality, limited red tape and low taxes. A few years later, he was granted citizenship in the United Arab Emirates and France.

In December 2024, Durov had a child with an ex-girlfriend, Hungarian model and influencer Diana Bako. She said on social media last year and this year that she was living in Dubai, and her child’s two grandmothers were there to help with the baby.

Images from Bako’s baby shower were set in a 14,000-square-foot rental villa on one of Dubai’s palm islands, which markets itself as offering eight luxury bathrooms, VIP suites and a “massive assorted candy wall.” Bako didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Durov’s current girlfriend, Juli Vavilova, is an online influencer who has posted that she had a miscarriage in France after Durov’s arrest in 2024. At a charity ball earlier this year tied to the Cannes film festival, Durov paid 400,000 euros in an auction to win Vavilova a walk-on role in a Spike Lee movie. Vavilova didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Durov said in the podcast interview that he wants to delay when the children get their money because he believes growing up without wealth helped him develop drive and focus.

Durov has also said he hopes his example will encourage other healthy men to donate sperm.

“Of course, there are risks,” Durov wrote on Telegram in 2024, “but I don’t regret having been a donor.”

How a String of Hacks Embarrassed Cyber Powerhouse Israel

Groups linked to Iran have used relatively simple techniques to leak internal emails and documents, experts say

TEL AVIV—Israel is known worldwide as a cyber powerhouse. Yet hackers linked to its biggest adversary, Iran, have managed to pull off a series of successful breaches by using known vulnerabilities to attack institutions that aren’t as well-defended as the country’s critical infrastructure.

Israel requires a high standard of cybersecurity for critical infrastructure, such as its electric utility, but not for less important bodies and institutions such as hospitals, which have fallen victim to some of the attacks linked to Iran. Some current and former Israeli cyber officials and experts say Israel could better protect itself if the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, passed a cyber law that would expand the rules beyond critical infrastructure.

The attacks have largely focused on leaking documents through publicly known vulnerabilities that can be exploited by scanning computer networks for weaknesses or by launching classic phishing attacks, analysts said. The simple attacks are repeated in large numbers, which helps increase the chances of success.

Over the past two years, Iranian-linked hacking groups have leaked hundreds of thousands of internal emails and documents from government bodies. Some particularly embarrassing incidents included a data leak from Israel’s National Defense College, in which hackers posted online the passport information of Israeli generals and officials from countries such as the U.S. and India. Other leaks include more than 15 years of internal Ministry of Justice documents and emails, and gun-license applications from Israel’s Ministry of National Security, including applicants’ military records.

Such attacks have been embarrassing to some in a country known for cutting-edge cyberwarfare, including Stuxnet, a high-profile sabotage project developed by Israel and the U.S. that infiltrated an Iranian nuclear enrichment facility in 2010. Israel and the U.S. haven’t publicly commented on their roles in the attack.

Israeli companies also export cyber weapons such as NSO’s Pegasus, which allows clients to take control over smartphones remotely to spy on targets. The military’s vaunted 8200 unit is also known for its cyber capabilities.

In June, during the war between Israel and Iran, Tehran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange was hacked and drained of more than $90 million, with a pro-Israel hacking group claiming responsibility. Israeli founders have built cybersecurity companies such as Checkpoint and Wiz, which Google recently acquired for $32 billion, which helps bolster Israel’s international reputation as a cyber power.

The recent attacks that struck Israel are known in the cybersecurity industry as “hack and leak,” in which a bad actor breaches a target’s system, steals data and releases it online to cause reputational damage.

“For the most part, they are exploiting known vulnerabilities,” said Ari Ben Am, an adjunct fellow at the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank. “The Iranians don’t have the ability to uncover totally new vulnerabilities, or zero day vulnerabilities at scale,” he said, referring to previously unknown security flaws in software, hardware or firmware.

Last week, the Iranian-linked group Handala leaked sensitive personal data belonging to former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, including his contact list and Telegram messages. Ben Am said the hack of Bennett’s phone probably wasn’t overly sophisticated. The hackers likely executed a “SIM swap,” tricking a mobile provider into transferring a phone number to a SIM card the hackers control. A spokesperson for Bennett didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Israel has legislation that requires cybersecurity measures aimed at protecting infrastructure deemed critical to state security, but hasn’t passed a comprehensive cyber law that would require other important bodies to adopt cyber protections and clearly define who is responsible for oversight. Such a law could have helped prevent Iranian-linked attacks against targets including Israeli hospitals, current and former Israeli officials and cyber experts said.

“There is a gap between the technological abilities of Israel as a cyber nation and the regulatory framework that is supposed to protect Israel’s civil arena from cyberattacks,” said Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, a senior fellow who specializes in technology law and policy at the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based think tank.

Israel designates dozens of bodies as critical infrastructure, and they are relatively well protected. However, organizations such as hospitals aren’t legally required to adopt cyber protections, and under current law there is no way to punish them if they fail to do so.

Several Israeli hospitals saw their data leaked online during the war in Gaza, including the Ziv Medical Center in northern Israel, which treated soldiers. Analysts said that leaks of personal data in attacks during the war have been used to put publicly identifiable information of Israelis online.

In an attack with more military value, Iranian hackers infiltrated CCTV cameras in June during the war between Israel and Iran, providing them with real-time visual intelligence on targets, according to a recent report by Amazon Threat Intelligence, a unit of Amazon that releases reports on cyber threats. Analysts said Iranian-linked groups likely took advantage of previously known vulnerabilities to carry out such attacks. The head of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate said this month that Iran infiltrated security cameras to document the impact of a missile strike against a leading Israeli scientific research center.

Iran is an actor in global cyberwarfare, and the country has been investing in improving its technological capabilities and quality of its personnel with specialized training, Ben Am said. Iranian-linked groups span almost the entire spectrum of cyber activity, relying on internet scanning to find vulnerable targets and developing custom malware, he said.

Israel has been targeted by many countries in the cyber realm since the start of the war in Gaza, said Adam Meyers, head of counter adversary operations at CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company. ”Given the sheer volume it’s hard to be right 100% of the time,” he said.

Trump administration unleashes a fresh setback for developers of renewable energy

The Trump administration has suspended leases on all large US offshore wind projects, citing national security concerns, in a fresh attack on the sector.

The US government announced it was immediately pausing leases on five offshore wind farms currently under construction, saying they were “expensive, unreliable, heavily subsidised projects”.

In a major setback for developers of the farms including Denmark’s Ørsted, interior secretary Doug Burgum said in a post on X that President Donald Trump was “bringing back common sense to energy policy and putting security FIRST!”

Trump has previously described wind power as the “worst” and “most expensive” form of energy and as president has taken several steps to thwart projects. 

In a press release, the Department of the Interior said Monday’s move followed “national security risks identified by the Department of War in recently classified reports”.

It also pointed to what it claimed were “inherent” risks of radar interference from offshore wind turbines that could obscure “legitimate moving targets”.

The interior department said the pause to offshore wind projects would give the government “time to work with leaseholders and state partners to assess the possibility of mitigating the national security risks posed by these projects”.

The five wind farms affected by the department’s announcement include Ørsted’s Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind, and Equinor’s Empire Wind.

The others are Dominion Energy’s $11.3bn Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind and Vineyard Wind, a project being developed by Iberdrola’s Avangrid subsidiary and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. 

Ørsted, the world’s largest offshore wind developer, said on Monday evening that its Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind projects off the north-east coast of the US were complying with 90-day suspension orders they had received from the interior department. Revolution Wind had been due to start generating electricity in January.

The Danish company said the projects had been scrutinised for any national security impacts as part of a US permit process.

It added it was evaluating “all options to resolve the matter”, including “potential legal proceedings”.

The company successfully petitioned a judge to enable it to resume work on Revolution Wind after the Trump administration issued a so-called stop work order to the project in August.

Ørsted was forced to tap shareholders for fresh equity via a $9bn rights issue in October after Trump’s hostility to the sector stymied its efforts to sell a stake in Sunrise Wind to an investor. 

Shares in Ørsted, which is listed in Copenhagen, closed down almost 13 per cent on Monday while those of wind turbine maker Vestas fell almost 3 per cent.

Equinor said it was evaluating the US suspension order and seeking “further information from the federal government”.

Dominion Energy said suspending Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind for any length of time would threaten the reliability of the power grid as well as thousands of jobs, and risked pushing up energy costs.

“CVOW is American owned and benefits all of our Virginia customers,” it added.

The project was thought to be in a favourable position because of its advanced stage of construction and the advocacy of the state’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin.

US-listed Dominion Energy’s stock fell almost 4 per cent.

Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, said Trump’s “obsession with killing offshore wind projects is unhinged, irrational and unjustified”.

He added the latest move by the Trump administration was a “backwards step that will drive energy bills even higher. It will kill good union jobs, spike energy costs and put our grid at risk”.

In recent weeks, the administration’s push against offshore wind encountered a setback when a Massachusetts district court struck down a ban on issuing new permits for the sector after 17 states and clean energy groups sued the government.