Andorra and San Marino signed an association agreement with the EU in Brussels on Monday that would bring both countries into the EU single market without making them members. Andorrans and Sammarinese would be able to live and work in the EU. EU citizens moving to Andorra would still need a permit under a quota system. Both countries keep their own taxes, and their banks get access to the EU market gradually, over up to 15 years. #SovereignMagazine sovereignmagazine.com/articl…

Gallup found that seven in ten Americans oppose an AI data centre being built near them, more than the 53% who oppose a local nuclear plant. Texas has suspended all new data centre permits until its grid operator finishes an audit. California and Florida have passed laws making data centres pay for the grid upgrades they need, and the House voted 417 to 3 to push every state towards the same. Egan-Jones Ratings expects higher costs and slower permits for the buildout, and rates the shift as positive for utilities. #SovereignMagazine sovereignmagazine.com/articl…

China's economy grew 4.5% year on year in the third quarter, up from 4.3% in the second, and its exports jumped 29.6% in September, China's statistics bureau said on Monday. China stockpiled oil before the US and Israel went to war with Iran in February, and it buys Iranian and Russian crude at a discount. In the US, regular petrol averages $4.33 a gallon, against $2.98 before the war. On 9 October Washington lifted sanctions on Russian diesel for six months. #SovereignMagazine sovereignmagazine.com/articl…

Revolut's app, card payments and transfers have been down since early on Tuesday in all 78 countries and territories on its status page. @Revolut says customers' money and data are safe but has not named a cause. The outage began shortly after Google Cloud lost power in one of its London data centre zones. Revolut runs its global systems on Google Cloud, and the two failures are reportedly linked. #SovereignMagazine sovereignmagazine.com/articl…

Stripe is developing stablecoin-backed cards that spend in euros, Brazilian reais, Mexican pesos and Colombian pesos, with Plasma, a stablecoin-payments company, as design partner. A cardholder with a euro balance will pay in euros without the money passing through dollars first. Stripe's stablecoin cards are still in private preview, and the companies have not given a launch date for the new currencies. #SovereignMagazine sovereignmagazine.com/articl…

Brunk Auctions (@brunkauctions) will sell the original 1768 survey map of the western Mason-Dixon Line in Asheville, North Carolina, on 29 October. Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon drew and signed it. Brunk's estimate is $800,000 to $1.2 million. Malcolm Forbes paid $360,000 for the map in 1982, and a private collector paid $556,000 for it in 2002. #SovereignMagazine sovereignmagazine.com/articl…

WaveDivision Capital, the investment firm of broadband executive Steve Weed, has agreed to buy EarthLink with The Pritzker Organization and Stephens Capital Partners. No price was disclosed. Weed was executive chairman of Ziply Fiber, which BCE bought for US$3.65 billion in 2025. EarthLink says it serves more than 500,000 internet and managed services customers. #SovereignMagazine sovereignmagazine.com/articl…

The median asking price of a US home fell 0.3% from a year earlier to $396,881, the first annual drop since March, according to Redfin. Freddie Mac's 30-year fixed mortgage rate averaged 7.40% on 15 October, up from 6.27% a year ago. A record 22% of sellers cut their asking price. Zillow says rental demand rose 19.2% from a year earlier in September. #SovereignMagazine sovereignmagazine.com/articl…

Boston Consulting Group estimates that nonbank financial firms such as private credit funds will earn 19% of global corporate and investment banking revenue in 2026. Their share was about 4% in 2013, and BCG expects it to reach about 23% by 2030. Bank lending to private credit funds is the fastest-growing product in the business, BCG says. In the US, banks' share of corporate lending fell from 48% in 2015 to 29% in 2025, according to Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman. #SovereignMagazine sovereignmagazine.com/articl…

AT&T has agreed to sell AT&T Mexico, the country's second-largest mobile operator, for $2 billion in cash. The buyer is a consortium owned equally by Grupo Televisa and Fintech Holdings. AT&T paid about $4.4 billion, including debt, for Iusacell and Nextel Mexico in 2015. AT&T Mexico made up 3% of AT&T's revenue in 2025, and the sale is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027. #SovereignMagazine sovereignmagazine.com/articl…

The Brattle Group, an economics consultancy, estimates that virtual power plants could cut the expected rise in US power bills by more than half. A virtual power plant pools home thermostats, car chargers and batteries so a utility can turn them down at peak times. Brattle projects the average household bill will be $98 a year higher in five years, after inflation, and a virtual power plant at a typical utility would take $56 off that. Brattle wrote the report for Everyday Electric, a home energy company. #SovereignMagazine sovereignmagazine.com/articl…

A bipartisan US robotics commission says the country is not on track to lead in physical AI, meaning AI in machines that act in the real world. Senators Ted Budd and Elissa Slotkin co-chair the commission. Chinese factories installed about 354,200 industrial robots in 2025, more than nine times the roughly 38,400 installed in the US, according to International Federation of Robotics figures. The commission will publish its recommendations in March 2027. #SovereignMagazine sovereignmagazine.com/articl…

Masaaki Taira, cyber security chief of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, has likened a wave of corporate data breaches to a state of emergency in cyberspace. Seven companies, including Skyticket, Times Car and the JR East railway group, have disclosed more than 55 million records that may have leaked. The government has not declared an emergency. It has asked companies to check the security of their contractors and delete data they do not need. #SovereignMagazine sovereignmagazine.com/articl…

Chas Aday, founder of beverage contract manufacturer SIP Manufacturing, now approves each customer quote in two minutes because Forgepoint's AI assistant, Frank, drafts it for him. His team used to build every quote by hand. Frank reads each request for quote and its part files, prices the job with the shop's own cost model and follows up with the buyer once a person signs off. Forgepoint, a New York start-up, has raised $9.8 million from Primary Venture Partners and a16z speedrun. sovereignmagazine.com/articl…

MyFreightWorld, a freight broker in Kansas, has an AI operator from New York start-up Evos auditing every carrier invoice it receives. In its first two months the operator made nearly 3,500 audit decisions at 97% accuracy, the company says. Evos operators learn a job from a company's most experienced staff and start behind an approval gate, getting more autonomy as their decisions prove accurate. Evos has raised $9 million from Uncork Capital and Field Ventures. sovereignmagazine.com/articl…

The White & Private Label Expo London (@whitelabelexpo) opens at ExCeL in four weeks, on 11 and 12 November 2026. Retailers and online sellers can meet manufacturers and private label specialists face to face, from ready-made lines with low minimum orders to products made to their own specification. Entry is free. whitelabelexpo.co.uk/?utm_so…

Software engineer Gergely Orosz wrote on X on 11 October that Instagram has removed human support and that paying customers now get AI support only, which he said does not work at all. Meta has not commented and has announced no such change. Its Meta Verified page still lists 24/7 chat or email support from a member of staff on the $14.99-a-month Standard plan. A footnote says enhanced support may not currently be available to all subscribers. #SovereignMagazine sovereignmagazine.com/articl…

Ithaca Holdings, a new technology holding company, has agreed to buy Bumble for $6.05 a share in cash, valuing the dating-app company at $1.3 billion. The price is about 86% below Bumble's 2021 IPO price of $43 a share. Blackstone and founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, who together hold 83.7% of the vote, have approved the sale, so public shareholders will not vote. Ithaca's founders, Ravi Gupta of Sequoia and former Meta revenue chief John Hegeman, will become Bumble's co-chief executives. #SovereignMagazine sovereignmagazine.com/articl…

A federal jury in Delaware has found that Arm breached its licence agreement with Qualcomm and interfered with Qualcomm's business relationship with Meta. The jury awarded Qualcomm $1 on each finding, $2 in all. Judge Maryellen Noreika still has to rule on a clause Qualcomm says lets it stop paying Arm royalties for five years after a breach. Closing arguments on that part of the case are set for 20 October. #SovereignMagazine sovereignmagazine.com/articl…