World

Samsung Electronics expects its profits for the three months to June 2024 to jump 15-fold compared to the same period last year.

An artificial intelligence (AI) boom has lifted the prices of advanced chips, driving up the firm’s forecast for the second quarter.

The South Korean tech giant is the world’s largest maker of memory chips, smartphones and televisions.

The announcement pushed Samsung shares up more than 2% during early trading hours in Seoul.

The firm also reported a more than 10-fold jump in its profits for the first three months of this year.

In this quarter, it said it is expecting its profit to rise to 10.4tn won ($7.54bn; £5.9bn), from 670bn won last year.

That surpasses analysts’ forecasts of 8.8tn won, according to LSEG SmartEstimate.

“Right now we are seeing skyrocketing demand for AI chips in data centers and smartphones,” said Marc Einstein, chief analyst at Tokyo-based research and advisory firm ITR Corporation.

Optimism about AI is one reason for the broader market rally over the last year, which pushed the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq in the United States to new records on Wednesday.

The market value of chip-making giant Nvidia surged past $3tn last month, briefly holding the top spot as the world’s most valuable company.

“The AI boom which massively boosted Nvidia is also boosting Samsung’s earnings and indeed those of the entire sector,” Mr Einstein added.

Samsung Electronics is the flagship unit of South Korean conglomerate Samsung Group.

Next week, the tech company faces a possible three-day strike, which is expected to start on Monday. A union of workers is demanding a more transparent system for bonuses and time off.

President Joe Biden is facing pressure from some major Democratic donors ahead of a critical few days in his campaign for re-election.

A number of donors are publicly warning they will withhold funds unless Mr Biden is replaced as the party’s candidate following his disastrous debate performance last week.

Friday is a big day for the president as he seeks to shore up his candidacy with a rare primetime TV interview and a rally in Wisconsin.

Pressure on Mr Biden, 81, to step aside has grown following a debate marked by several instances where he lost his train of thought.

While he admitted that he “screwed up” that night, he has vowed to stay on as his party’s standard-bearer taking on Donald Trump in the November presidential election.

Scrutiny on his public appearances has markedly increased since the debate.

In a White House speech to military families on Thursday to mark 4 July Independence Day, he stumbled over his words when referring to Trump as “one of our colleagues, the former president”.

And in an interview with WURD radio in Philadelphia, he lost his thread and appeared to say he was proud to be the first black woman to serve with a black president.

Donors have been weighing their options. Abigail Disney, an heiress to the Disney family fortune, told business news channel CNBC that she did not believe Mr Biden could win against Trump.

She said her intent to pull support was rooted in “realism, not disrespect”.

“Biden is a good man and has served his country admirably, but the stakes are far too high.”

The consequences of defeat in November “will be genuinely dire”, she added.

Ms Disney has given thousands of dollars to left-leaning political groups this year, according to Federal Election Commission records. But a spokesperson for the Biden campaign told BBC News she has not donated to the campaign directly this cycle.

A handful of other wealthy donors have conveyed similar intent.

Philanthropist Gideon Stein told the New York Times that his family was withholding $3.5m (£2.8m) to non-profit and political organisations active in the presidential race unless Mr Biden steps aside.

Hollywood producer Damon Lindelof, who has donated more than $100,000 to Democrats this election cycle, wrote a public essay in Deadline urging other donors to withhold their funds until there is a change.

The brother of Barack Obama’s former chief of staff, Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel, told a conference in Colorado that withholding funding was the key to ensuring Mr Biden’s exit from the race, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

“The lifeblood to a campaign is money, and maybe the only way . . . is if the money starts drying up,” he said, according to the newspaper.

Ramesh Kapur, a Massachusetts-based Indian-American industrialist, has organised fundraisers for Democrats since 1988.

“I think it’s time for him to pass the torch,” Mr Kapur told the BBC this week. “I know he has the drive, but you can’t fight Mother Nature.”

There are some who are worried there’s not enough time left for a new candidate to join the race, and they have decided to back Biden if he stays on.

A mega-donor the BBC spoke to this week, who declined to be named, said he planned to go ahead with a fundraiser for the president scheduled for later this month at his Virginia home.

The Biden campaign has said it raised $38m from debate day through to the weekend, mainly through small donations – and a total of $127m in June alone.

They have conceded he had a difficult debate but have said he is ready to show the public he has the stamina for the campaign.

On Friday morning they announced a new “aggressive travel schedule” in which he and his wife, along with Vice-President Kamala Harris and her husband, would blitz every battleground state.

He will start with a campaign rally in Madison, Wisconsin, on Friday, campaigning with Governor Tony Evers.

After that rally he is scheduled to sit down with ABC – the first television interview after the debate – in a bid to quell concerns about his age and mental faculties.

But the president is facing a series of negative polls which suggest his Republican rival’s lead has widened in the wake of the Atlanta debate.

A New York Times poll published on Wednesday suggested Trump was now holding his biggest lead yet at six points.

And a separate poll published by the BBC’s US partner CBS News suggested a slight shift towards Trump, who had a three-point lead over Mr Biden in the crucial battleground states.

Brajesh Upadhyay contributed to this report

An 81-year-old Shania Twain superfan has told his hero that meeting her was a “dream” after she called him up on stage at a show in his hometown.

The Canadian superstar, who recently lit up Glastonbury’s legends slot with a set of her greatest hits, asked Ken Northall to join her during her show at Lytham Festival in Lancashire on Thursday night.

She even changed the lyrics to That Don’t Impress Me Much in honour of him, swapping film star Brad Pitt’s name for Ken’s.

Thanking her as he left the stage, he told her it had been “a dream”.

Eyewitness footage shows a funnel-shaped column ripping through Shandong province.

Rescue operations are under way, after the tornado killed one person and injured 79 people, according to the Dongming Emergency Management Bureau.

China has seen extreme weather conditions in recent months, from searing heatwaves to torrential rain.

Controversial influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan are free to leave Romania but not the EU, a Bucharest court has ruled.

They had previously been banned from leaving the country where they are awaiting trial, indicted on charges of human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women. They deny all allegations against them.

The decision to allow freedom of movement in the EU is not final and can be appealed.

The brothers said the move represented a “significant victory and major step forward” in their ongoing case.

The brothers’ lawyer, Eugene Vidineac, called the ruling a “reflection of the exemplary behaviour and assistance of my clients.

“Andrew and Tristan are still determined to clear their name and reputation; however, they are grateful to the courts for placing this trust in them.”

Posting on X, a platform from which he was previously banned, Andrew Tate said: “The sham case is falling apart.”

The Tate brothers, former kickboxers who are dual UK-US nationals, are accused of exploiting women via an adult content business, which prosecutors allege operated as a criminal group.

Two female Romanian associates were also named alongside the brothers in an indictment published in June last year, and seven alleged victims were identified.

Andrew Tate is a self-described misogynist and was previously banned from social media platforms for expressing misogynistic views.

He has repeatedly claimed Romanian prosecutors have no evidence against him and there is a conspiracy to silence him.

The internet personalities are also wanted in the UK over sexual offences allegedly committed there.

The brothers have had restrictions on their movement for the past two years.

They were held in police custody during the criminal investigation from late December 2022 until April 2023, before being placed under house arrest until August, when courts put them under judicial control.

A Tanzanian portrait artist, who was accused of burning a photo of President Samia Suluhu Hassan, has been sentenced to two years in prison or a fine of $2,000 (£1,600) after being found guilty of cybercrimes.

Shadrack Chaula was arrested for allegedly recording a viral video, showing him burning a picture of President Samia while verbally insulting her.

The 24-year-old painter admitted committing the crime and failed to defend his action in court.

His arrest sparked legal controversy, with some lawyers saying that no law was broken in burning the picture.

Some social media users have started an online drive to raise money to pay Chaula’s fine so he can be freed from jail.

In 2018, Tanzania enacted tough laws against the spread of “fake news”, which critics see as a way of curbing freedom of expression.

Police said Chaula used “strong words” against the president in the video he posted on his TikTok account on 30 June in Ntokela village, in the south-western city of Mbeya.

Local police chief Benjamin Kuzaga on Tuesday told journalists that the artist’s offences included burning the president’s portrait and disseminating offensive content online.

“It is not the culture of Mbeya people to insult our national leaders,” Mr Kuzaga said.

Some lawyers said there was no law that criminalises burning a picture of the president.

“Was the picture taken by a government photographer? Let them come out publicly and explain their impact on society and the nation. Who can show the law that burning a picture is an offence?” lawyer Philip Mwakilima told the Mwananchi newspaper.

But the act, which is deemed unethical in Tanzania, sparked public outrage.

On Thursday, magistrate Shamla Shehagilo found Chaula guilty of distributing videos on TikTok that contained false information in violation of the country’s cyber laws.

The court ruled that his actions constituted cyber-harassment and incitement.

Chaula remained silent when given the chance to defend himself against the charges, local media reported.

The prosecutor had urged the court to impose a harsh penalty on him in order to deter others from “disrespecting” the president.

The case has sparked a debate in the country with critics saying the sentence is too harsh and a reflection of the government’s crackdown on dissent.

President Hassan, who came to power in 2021, has introduced reforms that have opened up the political and civic spaces.

But the opposition and rights groups have expressed concerns that the country is sliding back to retrogressive policies.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban has met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, in a visit that has been heavily criticised by EU leaders and Ukraine’s government.

Friday’s meeting was part of what Mr Orban called a “peace mission”, coming three days after a visit to Kyiv where he met Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Hungary has just taken over the presidency of the Council of the European Union, but EU leaders have stressed that Mr Orban is not acting on behalf of the bloc.

Mr Orban is the EU’s only head of government to have kept close ties to the Kremlin following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

After the meeting, which lasted several hours, Hungary’s PM said Russia and Ukraine were still “far apart” in their views on achieving peace.

“Many steps are needed to end the war, but we took the first step to restore dialogue,” he said.

The Russian leader called it a “frank and useful” conversation. He also repeated a previously rejected proposal for Ukraine to withdraw from regions in the south and east of the country which Russia claims to have annexed – an area that includes territory Russia does not currently occupy.

Volodymyr Zelensky has long said Ukraine will not negotiate with Moscow until Russian forces leave all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea.

Earlier, Mr Putin said Mr Orban was visiting “not just as a long-time partner” but as a European Union representative.

However, European leaders openly condemned the Moscow trip and emphasised he was not representing the EU.

“The EU rotating presidency has no mandate to engage with Russia on behalf of the EU,” Charles Michel, President of the European Council, wrote on X.

“The European Council is clear: Russia is the aggressor, Ukraine is the victim. No discussions about Ukraine can take place without Ukraine.”

“Appeasement will not stop Putin,” European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X.

Ukraine also condemned the visit: “For our country, the principle of ‘no agreements on Ukraine without Ukraine’ remains inviolable and we call on all states to strictly adhere to it,” the foreign ministry said a statement.

Earlier this week, Mr Orban visited Kyiv, saying “a quick ceasefire could be used to speed up peace negotiations”.

President Zelensky – who has had frosty relations with Mr Orban – did not publicly respond to the proposal.

Ahead of Ukraine’s offensive last summer, Mr Orban warned that Ukraine cannot win on the battlefield.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the Hungarian prime minister has underlined that Russia’s advantage in resources and men makes Putin’s country unbeatable.

However, many Ukrainians believe any ceasefire would simply cement Russia’s hold over territory it has seized from Ukraine and, if negotiations were to take place, they would prefer them to be conducted from a position of strength rather than on the back foot.

Mr Orban has been a vocal critic of Western support for Ukraine. He previously slowed agreement on a €50bn ($54bn; £42bn) EU aid package designed to support Ukraine in its defence against Russia.

Tuesday’s visit to Kyiv was his first in 12 years, while he met Mr Putin repeatedly during that time.

During Mr Orban’s joint appearance with Mr Zelensky, the body language between them was not warm, and neither took questions from the media after they gave their statements.

But for the next six months Mr Orban’s position as head of the Council of the European Union means he has an influential role as a figurehead for Europe.

His visit to Kyiv came on his second day in that role, saying there was a need to solve previous disagreements and focus on the future.