1.Netflix India sees double-digit growth in revenue, raising annual budget

Content streaming platform Netflix is betting big on India, and increasing its annual budget for the country to $18 billion. Their plans include original titles and also partnerships with Indian production houses. According to The Economic Times, it plans 28 original titles this year. Among the major titles is Jewel Thief: The Heist Begins starring Saif Ali Khan. The OTT platform’s plans are backed by profits it has seen in recent times. In FY24 Netflix India's net profit rose 49% to Rs 52 crore from Rs 39 crore in the previous fiscal year. 

2.India second biggest market for OpenAI; total users tripling in one yr: Altman

“OpenAI is looking for ways to expand its India presence, which is a natural process since India is one of the biggest developer ecosystems for the company. With multiple competitors within the US itself, and now coupled with the emergence of China as a force to reckon with, the company is in process of doubling down on its India presence. It has already begun discussing ways to localize its Indian citizens’ data in domestic data centres, in anticipation of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. The move to localise data operations is likely to commence soon," one of the three executives said on the condition of anonymity.

3.President Donald Trump’s call for the US to “take over” the Gaza Strip, demolish what remains, and repopulate it with “the world’s people” sparked immediate backlash across the Middle East and beyond.

The plan — building on Trump’s previous suggestion to resettle Palestinians in Jordan and Egypt — sees the US taking over responsibility for clearing unexploded munitions and rebuilding Gaza into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

The New York Times described Trump’s proposal as one of the “most brazen ideas that any American leader has advanced in years.” Trump, however, said there’s widespread support for the plan: “Everybody I have spoke to loves the idea.” He also took credit for the ceasefire. “They will never give me a Nobel peace prize,” he said. “I deserve it but they will never give it.”

4.Honda and Nissan’s $58bn merger close to collapse

Local media reported that the pair failed to reach a consensus on a deal in which Honda would offer Nissan a lifeline and bring the two brands under a single holding company slated to list shares in August 2026. They were hoping that by closing ranks, they could gain economies of scale and fight off the growing competitive threat of Chinese newcomers led by BYD.

But Honda demanded that Nissan implement a restructuring plan, while Nissan struggled to find ways to cut staff at various factories. The two sides grew increasingly confrontational, leading to Nissan’s decision, the Nikkei newspaper reported.

5.Gold Demand Hits Record High Globally In 2024, India Sees 5% Uptick: Bloomberg

Gold was the stand-out event in global commodities in 2024 as records fell. Just a few weeks into 2025, the metal is again setting successive peaks and reviving talk of whether it has the momentum to reach $3,000 an ounce.

That target enjoyed quite a lot of shock value when it first entered the mainstream given it was then both distant and, as a consequence, felt more than slightly outlandish. But with bullion trading today above $2,870 — and with prices on course for a sixth successive weekly gain — it’s well within reach in the first half, even if the rally does pause at some stage.

The old haven is turning heads as three things come together. First, gold appears to be a Trumpian asset. The new US president is long on disruption, surprise headlines, trade wars, and aggressive verbal posturing. His remarks about Gaza, for example, have an off-the-wall quality that’s reminiscent of his sessions before getting to the White House. Taken in aggregate, these are bullion-positive as pretty much anything could happen.

Second, central banks continue to be gold accumulators. Their purchasing plans seem to be unaffected by the metal trading at nominal highs, or the US dollar doing well, or 10-year Treasury yields being parked somewhere near 4.5%. The People’s Bank of China may tell us Friday that it has, once again, expanded its gold holdings. And where China leads, other central banks may well follow.

Third, while it’s getting more complicated, the Federal Reserve remains in cutting mode. 

6.Rewriting Your Personal Narrative for Growth

David Epstein, journalist and author of the Range : why generalists triumph in a Specialised world, has a conversation with coach Steve Magness about his latest book— Win the Inside Game: How to Move from Surviving to Thriving, and Free Yourself Up to Perform. The book delves into how the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves, help or hinder us in confronting challenges.

7.The DEI backlash: employers ‘reframing not retreating’: Financial Times

US companies ending programmes promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in recent weeks have chimed with the political zeitgeist and tapped into public fatigue towards such schemes.

Meta, McDonald's and Target are among those that have ditched DEI goals, prompting “anti-woke” activist Robby Starbuck to claim he was “enjoying every second of this”.

Yet while some companies are retreating from initiatives set up to improve the representation of their workforces, executive teams and boardrooms, others are doubling down. 

Costco’s shareholders recently voted overwhelmingly to uphold the company’s DEI policies, while JPMorgan Chase has reaffirmed its commitment, tying inclusion directly to performance and innovation.

Despite the politicised language, workplace experts say most companies are likely to be striving to find a middle ground between abandoning programmes that had benefited them and positioning themselves as targets for conservative activists.

Jennie Glazer, chief executive of Coqual, a diversity think-tank whose members are from Fortune 500 companies, says legal risks and polarised messages are causing leaders to pause and recalibrate. But members are more likely to be “reframing than retreating”, particularly as companies tighten spending.

One executive told her: “It’s not that our leaders don’t care — it’s that they’re exhausted by constant change and the feeling they must ‘get it right’ all the time.” Another, committed to inclusion policies, still described business leaders as “overwhelmed”.

8.Ranked: Semiconductor Production by Country or Region (1990-2032F)

The global semiconductor industry has undergone a dramatic transformation since 1990, reflecting broader shifts in technological manufacturing and economic power.

Once dominated by European and American manufacturers, the industry has experienced a significant geographic redistribution in recent decades.

This visualization shows the share of global semiconductor production by country or region, from 1990 to 2032 (forecast).

The United States’ decline in semiconductor production share represents one of the most significant shifts in this landscape.

From a commanding position of 37% of global production in 1990, America’s share has steadily eroded to a projected 14% by 2032.

This decline reflects broader trends in manufacturing outsourcing and the emergence of specialised manufacturing hubs in Asia.

9.Elon Musk has weaponized X in his war on government spending : New York Times

The billionaire is conducting polls asking X users which agency he should gut next. 

As Elon Musk digs into the federal bureaucracy in his crusade to slash government spending, he has a tool that no aspiring cost-cutter has had before: his own giant social media platform to debate, shame and bludgeon anyone who stands in his way.

Since the inauguration, Mr. Musk has attacked journalists and X users for posting the names of people working with him, calling it “a crime.” He’s accused Treasury Department officials of “breaking the law every hour of every day.” And Mr. Musk has mocked Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, as “hysterical.”

Elon Musk is shredding America’s government as he did Twitter : The Economist

JUST PAST midnight on February 3rd, Elon Musk appeared on X to explain what he is doing to the federal government. He had to speak over the patter of his four-year-old son, also called X. The bureaucracy, Mr Musk argued, constitutes “a fourth branch of government” which is “arguably the most powerful branch”.

He then came to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which he denounced as little more than a device to funnel taxpayers’ money to Marxists and criminals. He had, he claimed, the full support of Donald Trump and is “shutting it down”, notwithstanding that the agency’s existence is mandated by Congress. Later he posted that he had spent the weekend “feeding USAID into the woodchipper”.

Even as Mr Musk was speaking, workers at USAID’s headquarters in Washington were being told not to come in the next day. Some 600 of the agency’s staff seem to have been locked out of their emails. That followed a weekend in which the agency’s website went offline; its X feed was deleted; and workers from Mr Musk’s new government unit, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, reportedly tried to enter the agency and were initially stopped by senior staff from downloading classified data. Later on February 3rd Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, announced he had been made acting head of the agency while it faces “reorganisation”.

The takedown of USAID is the most dramatic example of what seems to be Mr Musk’s plan for the whole of government. It is drawn from his playbook as a corporate boss. Just over two years ago Mr Musk took over Twitter in a messy $44bn deal. Within a few months, much of which he spent at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco, he had reduced headcount by around four-fifths. A third of the staff accepted buyouts; many of the rest were fired. They included senior executives who were sacked instantly to stop their stock options vesting. Every decision, such as those about which Twitter accounts to ban, was put directly into Mr Musk’s hands.

Now he is trying to do the same thing with over 2m federal employees, in an attempt to cut $1trn—more than half of all discretionary spending—out of the federal budget. It is, says Donald Kettl, of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, like nothing that has ever happened before. “On a scale of one to ten, this is about 145. It’s so far off the charts,” he says. Richard Nixon was the most recent American president to govern as if the laws of the land did not apply to him, but “this is far beyond anything that Nixon even attempted.”

The first hints of Mr Musk’s seriousness came on January 28th, when more than 2m federal employees were sent an email by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the closest thing the government has to a human-resources department. The message offered “deferred resignation”. It had the subject line “fork in the road”, the same as in the email sent to Twitter employees when Mr Musk took over there. Lots of federal employees have been sent two more emails affirming the offer since. One went out to air-traffic controllers less than a day after a plane crash in Washington, DC, which has raised questions about short-staffing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

DOGE is technically embedded in the US Digital Service, an organisation created by Barack Obama to spread the use of new technology across government. But DOGE seems to be an entirely new thing. Many of its employees seem to be junior workers pulled in very recently from Mr Musk’s many private firms. Their names have not been made public. But Wired, a magazine, has identified six engineers now working with DOGE. The one who sent the email shutting down USAID, Gavin Kliger, graduated from high school in 2017. The youngest of the six, Edward Coristine, is 19; his relevant work experience consists of a few months interning at Neuralink, Mr Musk’s brain-implant firm. On his now-deleted LinkedIn profile, he took the moniker “bigballs”.

These engineers—and it is unclear how many more there may be—now seem to be able to enter just about any government building they like. They have apparently installed sofa beds in the office of the OPM. Under an executive order that Mr Trump signed on his first day in office, they are promised “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.” Some DOGE workers may also have been issued interim “Top Secret” clearances, which would allow them access to classified data.

Government employees in various agencies report that staffers from DOGE are turning up at their offices, plugging in servers and running “code reviews”. In the past week many government websites have gone offline, including vital ones, like that of the Census Bureau. Services like the passport-application website also disappeared. This may be linked to the purging of all “DEIA”-related material. What the DOGE people seem most keen on is access to personnel records and as much information as possible about what employees actually do. According to one civil servant interviewed by DOGE personnel, the questions include, “Which of your colleagues are most expendable?”

Here, too, Mr Musk seems to be applying lessons from his takeover of Twitter, where a small group of trusted acolytes combed through records such as the company’s Slack channels and email accounts to decide whom to fire. Yet the federal government is a much larger beast than Twitter, which at its peak had just 6,500 workers. And Mr Musk has been touching some extremely sensitive parts of it. On January 31st it emerged that David Lebryk, a senior career Treasury official, retired after clashing with officials from DOGE. They may have obtained access to the government payments system, which pays the government’s bills and makes almost 90% of its bank transfers.

Mr Musk suggested in a tweet that he has direct control, claiming that his team is “rapidly shutting down” government payments to contractors. On his midnight X talk, he claimed that a large share of government spending is being stolen by charities. Already some with government contracts—to ferry elderly patients to medical appointments, for example—report that payments they expected have not turned up.

Is any of this legal? The belated appointment of Mr Rubio as acting administrator of USAID suggests a recognition that agencies established by Congress cannot simply be shut down by fiat. Meanwhile, laws about the handling of government data remain in force. Few legal experts think that the offer of “deferred resignation” is legal. Nick Bednar, of the University of Minnesota’s law school, notes that there are laws for severance packages for federal workers—and they cap payments at $25,000. Mr Musk’s deferred-resignation offer would also seem incompatible with laws intended to reduce waste and corruption, says Mr Bednar. Workers who accept the offer—which has a deadline of February 6th—“could very much be left high and dry”, he adds.

Lawsuits are being filed, and a few workers are resisting forced downsizing. But protest has been notably limited. On February 3rd, as USAID’s Washington office was shut down, a few demonstrators milled outside. One, Kristina Drye, a USAID speechwriter, says that she “signed a contract to serve the American people” and, despite getting the email, decided to go into the office anyway. She retrieved some books, as well as a pair of beloved high heels. She says she does not expect to ever go back in. What Mr Musk is doing is “sheer, blatant disregard” for important work, she says. For now, nobody is stopping him.

10.Trumpian policy as cultural policy : Tyler Cowen

The Trump administration has issued a blizzard of Executive Orders, and set many other potential changes in the works.  They might rename Dulles Airport (can you guess to what?).  A bill has been introduced to add you-know-who to Mount Rushmore.  There is DOGE, and the ongoing attempt to reshape federal employment.

At the same time, many people have been asking me why Trump chose Canada and Mexico to threaten with tariffs — are they not our neighbors, major trading partners, and closest allies?

I have a theory that tries to explain all these and other facts, though many other factors matter too.  I think of Trumpian policy, first and foremost, as elevating cultural policy above all else. Read on