Tech stocks tank after Trump tariff rollout – Apple hit worst Tech stocks plunged Thursday after President Trump announced sweeping global tariffs, including a 10% baseline duty and steep levies on China (34%), Vietnam (46%), and the EU (20%). Apple led declines, dropping nearly 9%, its worst fall in five years. Other tech giants […]
Tech stocks tank after Trump tariff rollout – Apple hit worst
Tech stocks plunged Thursday after President Trump announced sweeping global tariffs, including a 10% baseline duty and steep levies on China (34%), Vietnam (46%), and the EU (20%).
Apple led declines, dropping nearly 9%, its worst fall in five years. Other tech giants like Meta, Nvidia, Amazon, and Tesla also suffered sharp losses.
Semiconductor stocks were hit hard, with Marvell, Arm, and Micron falling over 8%. The Nasdaq-100 dropped more than 4%, marking its worst period since 2022. The tariffs sparked fears of a global trade war, prompting China to threaten countermeasures.
Trump defended the move as economic “independence,” while investors worried about its impact on an already struggling tech sector.
TikTok bidders include Amazon plus OnlyFans founder
As the deadline for TikTok to find a buyer approaches this weekend, bidders for the short-video social media site are piling up with Amazon one of the names reportedly interested.
Separately, a consortium led by OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely, are among the latest to throw their hats into the ring to buy the firm from its Chinese owners ByteDance.
The site faces an April 5 deadline to reach a deal to find a non-Chinese buyer under threat of being banned from the US.
New UK cyber law may lead to £100K-a-day fines
The UK government has unveiled its Cyber Security and Resilience (CSR) Bill, threatening fines of £100,000 per day for organisations failing to act against cyber threats.
Announced by technology secretary Peter Kyle, the bill expands existing regulations, strengthens enforcement, and grants the government flexibility to adapt rules as threats evolve.
The legislation, set to enter Parliament later this year, broadens its scope to include managed service providers (MSPs) and potentially data centres.
Regulators will gain enhanced oversight, requiring incident reporting within 24 hours and full disclosure within 72 hours—stricter than EU and US equivalents. The government may also issue ad-hoc security directives, with non-compliance resulting in heavy fines.
Kyle cited rising cyber threats against critical infrastructure, emphasising urgent action. The bill aims to future-proof the UK’s digital economy, ensuring essential services like healthcare and utilities remain resilient. The move has been praised as necessary but criticised for its demanding compliance requirements.
Authors pen open letter after Meta ‘trains AI on pirated books’
Several authors have signed an open letter demanding that Meta be held to account by the UK over allegations that it used books to train its AI models without authors’ permission or remuneration.
The letter – signed by the likes of Richard Osman, Val McDermid, Kate Mosse, Kazuo Ishiguro and Sarah Waters -follows allegations in the US that accuse the Facebook parent of training its artificial intelligence models using authors’ work, despite failing to seek permission or offer recompense.
The Society of Authors open letter comes after last month’s story in the Atlantic under the headline “The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem” alleging that Facebook parent Meta used pirated material from Library Genesis (LibGen) to develop its AI systems on Llama 3.
Infosys claims Cognizant used its healthcare business for market control
Infosys has accused Cognizant Technology Solutions of leveraging its monopoly to block the Indian IT giant from competing against its healthcare platform Cognizant TriZetto Software Group.
In its latest filing with a US district court in Dallas, Infosys alleged that the New Jersey IT firm charged inflated prices to its customers by reducing its own output and that it stifled competition to maintain market dominance
In January the Indian IT giant filed an antitrust case against Cognizant in response to the latter’s claim that its rival had stolen trade secrets from TriZetto.
Cognizant has requested the court dismiss Infosys’s counter claim.
